Grace Episcopal
There is one faucet in the Grace Episcopal Church bathroom: cold. That little ‘C’ is daunting, to say the least, when you go to wash your hands. You rationalize, tell yourself that it can’t actually be too frigid, and then you turn it on. Maybe your skin is just in shock for a few seconds, because it first it really doesn’t seem to be that cold. But then it hits you. You envision your fingers turning into icicles as you race to soap up your hands, and then shove them under the faucet as shivers race up and down your spine. You turn it off quickly, numb digits barely feeling the cold, rusty metal, and dry your hands with the roughest, scratchiest paper towels known to mankind.
That’s my favorite place. If you add up the minutes and hours I’ve spent at that church, you’d have a good couple of weeks on your hands. I have vivid memories of sleeping on the couches outside the sanctuary during the service as a kid, having someone just bring me communion, before I even knew what the word ‘communion’ meant. Going over right after Judd and I rooted through our Easter baskets and threw all the black jelly beans at Dad, being dragged along to organ practice on Saturday nights, tying those insane bows to the windows every Christmas, some of my favorite memories were made there.
I can remember Palm Sunday and Halloween, the ice cream socials in the summer. Those are Grace/Brownella memories – they’ve started to meld together in my mind. I can recall making rootbeer with Mrs. George in a kettle that was (unbeknownst to us) full of ants. I remember changing into costumes for the Halloween tours in that tiny, cold-watered bathroom, and it makes me sad. I know I’ll probably never get to attend a good old-fashioned church service there, never get to play musical pews with my crazy organ-loving father, and never have to put up that messy nativity scene. (Though I have to help Dad take it down soon, I suppose.) I’m not sure about the future of the building itself, but I know it will never be the same.
Grace is a shelter from the storm. No matter what happens to go wrong in my life, going to Grace has always made me forget about it for a little while. When I peeled a piece of wallpaper off of my bedroom wall on accident and was wracked with guilt, going to Grace let me forget about it and engross myself in dropping candy into the vents while Dad was busy looking the other way.
It makes me feel guilty, how I don’t particular care for the church services themselves. I love the people, but I’m not the most pious teen you’ll ever have the misfortune to meet. The building is the most important part of the experience to me [little Thomas = me], and I can’t help but wonder if any church will ever be the same for me. I’m not too interested in the services I go to, and Father tells me that there are other places like Grace in the world, but I think it’s one of a kind. No other church will be exactly the same. I don’t know how to open random doors in other churches, I’ll never be able to root through any given cupboard to find candy and duct tape, and in no other church can I dig under a couch to find the same games I’ve played with since I was knee high to a grasshopper. Heck, I don’t even know if those are still under the couch there. But anyway.
I can sit here, sippy-cup full of diet coke in hand, and recall a million little things about that building. I have countless stories about Annie and I trying to make concoctions with berries, grass, and bricks behind the bushes. I’ve pumped that hand water pump in the grass so many times I’ve lost count. Dad always parks in the same spot, I always sit in the same spot, and everything stays the same.
Maybe that’s my problem. I don’t want my life to change this radically. The loss of my Elementary and Middle Schools wasn’t too big of a shock, but losing Grace is painful. I’m not losing the building itself – I hope to God that Grace stands tall and strong for another hundred plus years. Knowing that it’s open to other people, that someone other than my Father is playing the organ there, that I’m not privy to some well-kept community secret that no one can take from me – it hurts a little. It’s a selfish emotion, I know, but the thought of someone I don’t know coming to (my?) church to listen to someone I don’t know play music I’ve not heard before feels like an invasion, like someone has stolen part of me that I’m not going to get back.
I’ve got terrible memory. I can barely remember a thing from a week ago, much less years, but Grace Episcopal has imprinted itself so firmly in my mind that I will remember forever.
I can hum along with so many songs that are now the background of my childhood. I can recall the sound of Father E.T. preaching when I close my eyes, and I know exactly where the floor creaks when you step on it.
This isn’t so much a blog post as just a list of things I never want to forget.
The feeling of the soft red carpet underfoot as I fake-pranced down the aisle to a song played comically slow. The day Annie was baptized there. The bishop visiting. The bowls of AA candy we ransacked. The candles in the hurricane-lamp, wrought-iron poles at the ends of every other pew. The two plushy kneeling-bar-things that I still love to sit on for fun. Not being tall enough to reach my own, less comfortable perch and being forced to war with the pew as I teetered on the edge. The comforting thud of my Father’s feet against the pedals of the organ. How the floor buzzes when he plays lows notes. The gold collection plate, worn ever-smoother by countless hands ferrying money up and down the aisle on cue. The times I thought the vacuum tracks on the floor were the tracks from where they wheeled my mother’s casket in, carefully preserved for a decade. The wooden cross and its heavy gold counterpart, both equal in meaning although not equal in material. The stupid, stupid wallpaper border with its sheep and bibles and grapes. The ugly gold coat rack. The never-in-tune piano. The freezing-cold room to the left of the altar, always smelling faintly of communion wine and dust and smoke.
I miss it, I miss it, I miss it. Grace is where I learned the true meaning of ‘sanctuary.’ I’m not allowed to yell in there, or to run or eat or fight my brother, but nothing has ever stopped me from sitting in the same creaky pews for an hour or two on a Sunday morning to listen to people I know and love tell me things. There is no war in there, no arguments and no being afraid. I can go and sit in there, staring at the same crack-riddled ceiling and know that for a little while, everything can be alright.
I have to give that up. I know it. I want to get out of Galion badly enough. But Grace will always be a little part of me. Hidden away, sometimes forgotten as I get older and have more things in life to remember, but always there. I can come back to it in my mind when I need to, sink my feet into that soft, red carpet and remember.
