The Good Years

If you watch HGTV, you are familiar with the following scenario: a couple goes on vacation, they fall in love with the destination, and sooner or later decide to move there. This was true of my parents shortly after their conversion experience (described in the previous post). After visiting relatives who lived in the beautiful northwest, they fell in love with the mountains, and quickly decided to relocate.

They left as carefree young adults and first-time parents and returned nearly 25 years later as embittered, disillusioned middle-aged adults with a family whose fabric hung in tatters. Dad voiced the question on all of our minds then - if we had never left, how different would things be? Would he have ever become a minister? Would our family still be happy and loving as it once had been? Would my sister and I still believe?

What if -- useless words to ponder, I know, but irresistible just the same. I think I can speak for all of us by saying that we (at least secretly) think our lives could have been better if mom and dad had stayed in the midwest.

But if that were the case, I wouldn't have nearly as interesting a tale to tell.

Life in the northwest started out idyllic, though even the early days held portent of the coming change. Dad found employment at an auto-body shop, and he settled the family temporarily in a small apartment.

I surprised mom and dad by arriving 18 months after my brother (I'll call him Boss). I was born with fuzzy red hair, like Boss had been. According to an agreement my parents had, the red hair meant dad got to name me; however, mom begged and pleaded, so I ended up with her pick for a name. Later, my hair fell out and grew back blond, so she says I was meant to have that name. For this blog, I will refer to my earlier self as Song.

An important part of settling into their new home in the northwest was finding a "good" church to attend. By good I mean one that taught the correct biblical doctrines as my parents understood them. The first baptist church they tried did not measure up because it was not evangelical enough (it did not emphasize door-to-door witnessing).

Before long, mom and dad found an ifb church that was just starting up. The preacher fit their ideal, so they moved their membership to his church. Papa Preacher's style of leadership had two approaches. He could be gregarious, persuading compliance through personal charisma. If that didn't work, then he laid down the law. The person could take it or leave. And they did leave sometimes. As a young child, of course, I only saw Papa Preacher's friendly side. He and his wife were like grandparents to us kids, and we loved them fiercely.

In this time period, dad experienced trouble at work. This was in the days before safety procedures became mandated in the workplace. Imagine working in an auto-body repair shop where wearing even rudimentary masks met with derision, where proper ventilation and air conditioning did not exist, and where workers would only be dismissed if the outside temperature reached 100 degrees. Many employees came down with mysterious illnesses, my dad included.

He became plagued by severe headaches, mental confusion, body aches and weakness. One day he lost time, driving for two hours and arriving at home with no idea how he had gotten there and no memory of where he had been. These symptoms drove him to quit his auto-body career and find other employment. Gradually, the symptoms disappeared and his health seemed to return to normal.

A few years passed, during which, our family moved from the apartment into a little house with rough wood siding. Mom's mother made the move to the northwest and married again. Then my sister, the last of us kids, was born. I'll call her Indie (short for Independent) since she's always had her own way of doing things and she never bought into what we were raised to believe (the way I did).

Sadly for her, she doesn't remember when our family was beautiful and happy and the smiles on family portraits were genuine. Back then, we went to the park and fed the ducks. Boss and I got to go swimming in the public pool. We often rode bikes to the nearest playground and spun on the tire swing. And we stopped at the salt licks to see the mountain goats every time we went to visit Grandma and her new husband.

Something else she doesn't remember is an older sister that was wild and crazy, who loved to run and laugh and play tricks on people. Who used to get scolded for belly sliding down the stairs at Grandma's house and scaring everyone with the thump she made at the bottom. Who got in trouble for being too rowdy in the house with best friend "Sammy". And who was a daring tomboy who liked to climb trees and hang upside down on the monkey bars.