A Tribute to Two People Who Helped Me Survive Childhood

 Those of us who have suffered abuse as children and who have survived to lead productive and relatively "normal" lives usually have had somebody who provided support in some way when we were young.  In my case, I felt accepted and welcomed by two people in my church.  These were not the only people outside my immediate family who were supportive, but these two people, Rev. Charles Cotton and Mrs. Johnson, were always there for me when I was a child, and whether they knew it or not, they played a major role in my young life.  My childhood was not all bleak because I looked for the good in life and cherished it when I found it.  If you have read or have seen "Pollyanna," you know that Pollyanna always managed to find something to be glad about.  Well, Pollyanna had the right idea!  Somehow, when I was a child, I always managed to find something good in my life--even when pickings were mighty slim!  

In this essay, I give you a glimpse into my personal religious beliefs.  These are my beliefs, and they are what they are.  You may well have beliefs totally different from mine.  A lot of people do!  Believing in a "higher power," whatever that power may be, is, I think, important to one's spiritual survival or to the survival of the soul.  Now that I am an elderly adult, I look beyond the more literal beliefs of my childhood and believe that there is a force for Good in our universe.  I hope that one day my soul will become part of a Universal Good, whatever that may be.  In the meantime, I enjoy participating in the more earth-bound formalities and rites of the Episcopal Church, quaint as those rites may be at times.  Enjoy the humor! 

 

Thank You, Reverend Charles Cotton

As I grow older, I am able to see my childhood as a glass half full rather than as a glass half empty.  It has taken me a long time to reach this point because the collective pain of my childhood memories has overshadowed the joys for so long.  But you, Reverend Cotton, are a good part of the reason why I can now find joy in my memories.  You probably never realized how important a role you played in my young life, so now, sixty-some years after you left my childhood church in 1950, I am going to tell you.

You, Reverend Cotton, were there in 1943 to start me on the path of my lifelong spiritual journey.  When I entered the Sunday School program at St. Stephens Episcopal Church in Longview, Washington, at age three, you had developed the curriculum and had found a teacher for my class.  Despite the fact that it was wartime, you had somehow found the funds to supply us with full-sized crayons that had sharp points and smelled brand new, and you must have commissioned a squadron of cookie bakers, for each Sunday we helped ourselves to home-baked oatmeal-raisin and chocolate chip cookies heaped high on white porcelain plates.  Sometimes we were treated to Snickerdoodles, warm from the oven and sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon.  And on Sundays most of us went home with red moustaches after drinking cherry-flavored Kool Ade.  When our teacher talked to us about Jesus’ love for little children, I was able to comprehend because I felt loved and safe at your church.

Although my young mind may not have remembered all the fine points of the material you wanted us to learn, I remember that you and my Sunday School teachers were glad to see me.  I felt welcome at your church, and I had friends to play with at Sunday School.  Betty Martin was my best friend, and she wore her hair in a Dutch bob topped by a huge plaid taffeta bow.  I had long, boring pig tails tied with tiny plaid taffeta bows.  Betty smelled deliciously of bacon grease and pancake syrup, and I looked forward to sitting next to her when we colored and did craft projects.  I remember, too, the minty aroma of the white paste our teacher doled out to us on little paper squares.  Betty and I tried not to eat the paste, but sometimes temptation overwhelmed us, and then we would look at each other and laugh.  If I try hard, I can still hear Betty’s monotone when we sang “Jesus Loves Me,” and I can still hear her admonishing me to “stay in the lines” as we colored the pages illustrating Bible stories. 

To this day, Reverend Cotton, I remember the lessons I learned in Sunday School and, when I was an older child, during your sermons, regarding staying in the lines of moral and decent behavior and loving my neighbor.  Nowadays, those lessons may be regarded as old fashioned by some people, but in my experience, human decency, kindness, thoughtfulness, charity, and respecting others will never go out of style.  You and my Sunday School teachers taught me those values, and I have never forgotten them.  Those teachings, in fact, have guided my decisions my entire life, and I thank you with all my heart.

In addition to providing the safe nest I needed to begin my spiritual growth, you, Reverend Cotton, were the world’s greatest Santa Claus!  After our late afternoon Christmas Eve service each year, you disappeared into the sacristy and, magically, Santa emerged from the same room--it took me a few years to get it through my head that you and Santa were one and the same, but I finally puzzled out the mystery.  Not only were you dressed in a magnificent red suit trimmed with white fur, but you carried a huge brown sack over your shoulder.  And when you wound your way among the pews and down the aisle giving out the contents of your sack, bigger-than-life navel oranges and foot-long peppermint sticks, I saw a twinkle in your eyes just like the twinkle in the eyes of St. Nick in “The Night Before Christmas.”  When you smiled at me, I knew I belonged right there, in that quaint little Celtic church, and I knew you would never let anyone turn me away or tell me I was unworthy.  I didn’t know it then, but now I know that your assurance was the greatest gift you gave me, greater by far than all the oranges and peppermint sticks in the world.

Although my parents were atheists, they agreed when friends of the family asked that I be baptized.  To this day, when I think about that Sunday in 1943, I want to throttle myself, and I can well imagine that you could cheerfully have done the job if you had given in to your baser instincts.  For some reason unknown even to me, I was suddenly and inexplicably afraid of you, the baptismal font, and the onlookers.  As I stood there in my little double-breasted sailor coat, clicking the brass buttons together, stomping my feet, and sticking my lower lip out, muttering incessantly, “I don’t like that man, I don’t like that man, I don’t . . .,”  you kept your cool through the final Amen.  What you did or said after my parents dragged me, screaming and kicking, through the front door, I don’t know.  I don’t want to know!  You may have wondered later if my baptism “took,” in fact.  Well, I will never be one hundred percent certain about that in this life, but I have remained in the Faith, if that is any comfort.

When you left St. Stephens in 1950 to become assistant to Bishop Bayne in Seattle, I was eleven years old, and I cried.  You wouldn’t have known how I felt when you left because I didn’t tell you.  I remembered you, however, and I remembered the journey and the path you showed me.  I continued my faithful attendance, was confirmed, and joined the adults each Sunday in taking Communion.  But my church experience lacked something without you there.  I missed you and the twinkle in your eyes and your welcoming smile.  Maybe someday I will see you again and tell you this in person.  Until then, I can thank God for you when I say my prayers.  Rest in peace, Reverend Cotton.  You deserve it! 

          

About this photo:

 If I were asked to pick a photo that brought back the happiest memories of my childhood, I would choose this photo of the St. Stephen’s Junior Choir, 1948.  I am standing in the back row, trying to hide, and Betty Martin is to my right,  ribbon in her bobbed hair.  When I look at this picture, I am taken back in time to the choir picnics at Spirit Lake decades before Mt. St. Helens blew, to “Fling Out the Banner” played on the huge pipe organ at St. Mark’s in Seattle as we processed on Cathedral Day, to the Christmas party at our chaperone’s home, and to all the other choir events that delighted my young heart.  

Most of the children in that photo are still alive today, although some of them may have lost the mischievous twinkle in their eyes.  The discipline of working for a living and personal tragedies tend to reduce twinkles in adult eyes.  Those little boys in the front row looked like they were up to something, and most of the time they were!  I wonder what they are up to now.  Would they remember the tricks they played on us girls?  Would the girls remember how they giggled when they ate cookies and talked about the boys? 

The lady in the hat is Mrs. Johnson, and she was our chaperone and "keeper."  I felt sorry for her the evening the boys got rowdy at her home during the choir Christmas party.  I'm sure she wished she had not taken us on.  She was, however, a “Church Lady” to the nth degree, one of those valiant souls with unlimited patience who could always be relied upon in an emergency and who would never admit defeat under even the most trying of situations.  And “trying” we were.  We were always trying something!

When I think about Mrs. Johnson now, I am warmed by the memory of her kindness and the enduring patience of her loving soul.  She paid attention to me when few other adults did.  She knew I walked the blocks to church and Sunday School every Sunday all by myself, and she knew my parents were not believers.  She sensed my loneliness and isolation, my feeling of not belonging, and she taught me how to be a proper little Episcopalian girl, proper by the standards of the time, that is.  She wanted me to fit in.

Mrs. Johnson taught me how to genuflect correctly, how to use a hankie to cover my head if I didn't have a hat, and how to take Communion without spilling the wine.  She also taught me to never, ever chew the Host.  Chewing the wafer would hurt Jesus, she explained, because He was in the wafer, and Jesus had borne enough hurts already. “We don’t want to cause Him more pain,” she would remind me tenderly, and I would agree. Although in my child mind I was not completely certain as to the connection between chewing the wheaten wafer and the suffering of Christ, I was certain that I did not want to add to His suffering.  To this day, I do not chew the wafer.  Catholic friends have told me I'm old fashioned, even pre-Vatican I, in their opinions.  But every time I take communion, I hear Mrs. Johnson telling me to "never, ever chew the Host!"  And I never do.  Lessons taught by a loving teacher are not forgotten or abandoned.

I believe that the most important thing Mrs. Johnson taught me, though, was to look within myself to discern what Jesus wanted me to do.  Mrs. Johnson was the leader of Junior Daughters of the King, and each month when we met, we said a prayer that ended in this question, “Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?”  We reflected in silence to hear Jesus’ reply in our hearts, and then each of us in turn told the others what we had heard.  The following month we reported on how well we had done as we were bidden, and then we listened to the voice in our hearts tell us what we were to do in the coming month. 

To this day, I listen for Jesus’ voice when I want to know which direction my life is to take. Jesus never fails me.  As I said, lessons taught by a loving teacher are not forgotten or abandoned.