Only a Fool Would Have Believed It in the First Place: A Cautionary Memoir About Damaging Relationships Within Religious Homes and Institutions

By Faith Hartmann

Sometimes comical or bizarre, and at other times pathetic and tragic, this cautionary story is for persons wanting and needing to find an ally as they struggle with breaking away from a destructive religious environment. Buoyant and hopeful overtones often battle with discordant angry and bitter undertones as this book consistently lays bare the detrimental dark core at the heart of one womans lengthy Christian experience. Since far too many other persons have fallen into similarly laid traps by con-artist leaders of the institutional church, this book provides possible psychological rescue tools.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 15, 2012
• ISBN: 9781479735945

Faith Hartmann

A retired professor of religious studies and philosophy (Urbana University, Urbana, Ohio, where she taught on campus and at two off-campus sites at a men's prison and a woman's prison), author P.O. Highby was no "Ivory Tower" professor. She emphasizes that she obtained her Ph.D. in theology and philosophy not because she prefers these fields, but because she had learned from experience that these categories caused the most harm to women and children. Highby accidentally learned of the religious cover-up and outright erasure of data on the war on women and Nature while using science, not seminary, libraries.

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Copyright © 2012 by Faith Hartmann.

Library of Congress Control Number:                     2012919559

ISBN:                     Hardcover                     978-1-4797-3593-8

                     Softcover                     978-1-4797-3592-1

                     Ebook                     978-1-4797-3594-5

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CONTENTS

Preface

Prologue How the Title Came To Be

Chapter 1 The Recurring Dream

Chapter 2 The Decisions Made For the Child

Chapter 3 The Basement

Chapter 4 The Sand Box

Chapter 5 The Piano, I

Chapter 6 The Birthday Party

Chapter 7 Shirley Temple Curls

Chapter 8 The Piano, II

Chapter 9 The Decision Made By the Child

Chapter 10 Santa Claus

Chapter 11 The Cry of the Whippoorwill

Chapter 12 The Piano, III

Chapter 13 The Piano, IV

Chapter 14 Christmas Cookies

Chapter 15 Christmas Fruitcake

Chapter 16 Between the Sheets

Chapter 17 Confirm Versus Infirm

Chapter 18 Faith Healing

Chapter 19 The Test

Chapter 20 The Piano, V

Chapter 21 Without Proof of Virginity

Chapter 22 First Date

Chapter 23 Enlightenment at Sixteen

Chapter 24 Enlightenment at Seventeen

Chapter 25 Visiting Missionaries

Chapter 26 Revivals

Chapter 27 Double Standards

Chapter 28 The Headless Lady at the Carnival

Chapter 29 A Genuine Salvation Experience

Chapter 30 Religion/Justice/Politics

Chapter 31 Beautiful Feet Upon the Mountains

Chapter 32 Love?

Chapter 33 Meeting the In-Laws

Chapter 34 Marriage

Chapter 35 Honeymoon

Chapter 36 Passavant Hospital

Chapter 37 Serious Complications

Chapter 38 Myths Versus the Real World

Chapter 39 More of the Real World—Plus a Small Miracle

Chapter 40 Sure Shot

Chapter 41 The Ultimatum

Chapter 42 Seminary Party

Chapter 43 Party about Polity

Chapter 44 Hen Party in a Seed Bed

Chapter 45 Blackballed

Chapter 46 One Church, with Parsonage

Chapter 47 The Ladies Aid Society

Chapter 48 It’s a Girl!

Chapter 49 Cellar Stairs

Chapter 50 The Children’s Sermon

Chapter 51 Co-Missionaries, I

Chapter 52 A Leap into Laughter

Chapter 53 Co-Missionaries, II

Chapter 54 Co-Missionaries, III

Chapter 55 A Different Kind of Plumbing

Chapter 56 Heavenly Ordering

Chapter 57 Under the Church Basement Stairs

Chapter 58 Home of Our Own

Chapter 59 End of the Line

Chapter 60 Living a Lie

Chapter 61 Religious Insights in Secular Settings

Chapter 62 Effects of Conversion to Feminism

Chapter 63 A Dastardly, Nearly Deadly, Deed

Chapter 64 Prison Perceptions

Chapter 65 Disintegration of a Family, I

Chapter 66 Speaking in Tongues

Chapter 67 Disintegration of a Family, II

Chapter 68 Disintegration of a Family, III

Chapter 69 Disintegration of a Family, IV

Chapter 70 Disintegration of a Family, V

Chapter 71 Disintegration of a Family, VI

Chapter 72 Teacher’s Pets

Chapter 73 My Washed Brain Gets All Muddy

Chapter 74 The Library Carrell

Chapter 75 The Church Prostitute

Chapter 76 Library Angel

Chapter 77 Signs, Not Wonders

Chapter 78 A New Beginning, Once Again

Chapter 79 The Reading Academy

Chapter 80 INTERLUDE I: Crime, But No Punishment

Chapter 81 INTERLUDE II: Chewing Gum and Ford V8s

Chapter 82 Interlude, III: Preaching My Mother’s Sermon

Chapter 83 Interlude, IV: Two Serendipitous Accidents

Chapter 84 Tragedy

Chapter 85 Intrigue, I: Aura of Elitism and Hierarchy

Chapter 86 Ridiculous Elitism and Hierarchy

Chapter 87 Intrigue, II: More Elitism and Hierarchy

Chapter 88 Tricky Vicky

Chapter 89 Continued Ph.D. Coursework Summary

Chapter 90 Intermission

Chapter 91 Theology/Philosophy Course Summary, Continued

Chapter 92 Psychology Course Summary

Chapter 93 An Unexpected Workshop

Chapter 94 History Course Summary

Chapter 95 Interim

Chapter 96 Interim, Prolonged

Chapter 97 Intrigue, III

Chapter 98 Tragedy, II

Chapter 99 Intrigue IV

Chapter 100 Practicalities

Chapter 101 Intrigue, V

Chapter 102 Eclipse of the Moon

Chapter 103 Intrigue, VI

Chapter 104 Good Fear

Chapter 105 Class Hierarchy Still Rules

Chapter 106 What’s a Swedenborgian?

Chapter 107 Prison Joy

Chapter 108 The Only Begotten Daughter of God

Chapter 109 Practicalities, II

Chapter 110 Phallic Fallacies

Chapter 111 Fundamentalists Versus Swedenborgians

Chapter 112 Chuck Colson’s Prison Ministries Versus GED Teachers

Chapter 113 Retirement

PREFACE

As the second part of the title declares, this memoir tells of types and stages of injurious and destructive religious relationships, both personal and institutional. The facts are true, but the names and places are changed to protect the innocent as the saying goes. Using a pseudonym, the author usually writes in the first person. The third person is used whenever the memories are too emotionally painful, or when the subject matter, such as talk about sex in that cultural era, was too Victorian to use the first person.

The first type of religious relationship is the brainwashing and indoctrination stage of the child and youth. The second type, generally worse for most females than males in our culture, is the marriage relationship in which the Christian woman must be a subservient, selfless, obedient helpmate to her husband, who in this case happens to be a Christian minister and missionary. In the 1950s to the 1970s, this religious pattern in the wife’s case was given the secular name of The Enabler. Divorce was forbidden, and this pattern continued until death, with the children expected to follow in the same Christian steps.

But because of a tragic crisis concerning her children, the author chose to break the pattern and a divorce did occur. As a result, the author’s role goes through a dynamic change to become similar to that of a journalist or a reporter as she turns to writing more of an exposé of the behind-the scenes action that occurs within the heart of a relatively liberal religious seminary institution that in 1975 had first opened its doors to females!

Forty-five years of age, the author was about 20 years older than most of the other seminarians. Having minored in religion at a church college, and having worked in the church as a co-missionary with her ex-husband, she was already a heretic. Her past experience teaching church doctrine to the mission women and children had made her very aware of the misogynous teachings of the institutional church that totally devalued the role of women outside of their tiny place or sphere. Therefore, she viewed her studies with a more critical and experienced eye, but she still was determined to learn, in depth, why the institutional church despised females. She chose theology/philosophy as her major subject—not because she revered the field—but because she knew from past experience that these two ancient categories brought more harm to women than any other religious subject.

The advantage to having a little known, anonymous author of a memoir is that the total focus is not upon the personality of the individual. Rather, such anonymity gives the reader an unusual glimpse into seminary life and classroom.

Sometimes this exposé shows the breakdown of all religious myths, the uncovering of hierarchical schemes, and the resistance thrown up by the religious bureaucracy. At other times, such as in her later Ph.D. program, the disclosure was accidental. While doing research for her dissertation at science—not seminary—libraries, she also exposed and uncovered hidden religious secrets from the 1500s to the 1700s that referred to the Science-Religion Split. This revelation of deliberately buried secrets almost ends in total disaster. But the crisis is resolved. A new stage of teaching religious studies and philosophy at a university and at a men’s prison and a woman’s prison ensues with more victories than defeats.

PROLOGUE

How the Title Came To Be

Only a fool would have believed it in the first place! my sister sneered as she swung her hand to slap my face. As upset as she was angry, Virginia’s aim was off; her slap missed my cheek and landed on my throat—resulting in far more pain to me than if she had connected with my cheek or jaw. The sharp pain instantly stopped my tears of sadness and self-pity.

Virginia had traveled the two hours from her home to visit me in order to berate me for leaving my husband after twenty-four years of marriage. My older sister by four years, Virginia had never before slapped, punched, pushed, or hit me, for we had been raised by a fanatically religious mother with a stern and unforgiving moral and behavioral code: Christian children were to be quiet and obedient; no fighting was allowed.

Virginia had no quarrel with the fact that my ex-husband (a Lutheran minister turned social worker) had been a very poor husband as well as a neglectful and unloving father to his children. She had often watched as he heaped subtle but insidious psychological and emotional abuse upon us.

You know I never liked him, Virginia admitted, and I warned you not to marry him, but you didn’t listen to me. She paused for emphasis, insisting: If you could put up with him for twenty-four years, you certainly could put up with him longer.

I tried to justify my sudden exit from my home by answering her: But the situation was getting much worse and he had taken to blaming me for every little thing that goes wrong in his life. He was thrilled when his mother and father blamed me for his leaving the ministry. That gave him an out for not telling them the truth which was that he had hated being in the ministry and that he had worked as little as possible all ten years that he was in that job.

With a skeptical look on her face, Virginia suggested that perhaps I was to blame for much that was wrong with the marriage. She added that just maybe I wasn’t that good as a minister’s wife, either.

But I was a good minister’s wife! I insisted. Then I added some specific examples: I was hostess to the entire congregation. I taught Sunday School; I led the Ladies Aid group: I led the children’s choir; I entertained visiting dignitaries, and I baked hundreds of cakes and casseroles and thousands of cookies for church pot luck suppers. I even wrote some of his sermons for him.

Virginia was not impressed. She didn’t value my goody-two-shoes role; nor did she value women being martyrs. She just shrugged her shoulders.

In order to emphasize my faithfulness, I changed my arguments to the issue of belief: And, until recently, I tried hard to keep believing in Christian doctrine. I worked hard at understanding the Scriptures. I taught Bible Studies for the women and for the Sunday School children. I was obedient to my husband as St. Paul and Lutheran belief require.

It was precisely this emphasis upon my obedient and believing doormat behavior that triggered Virginia’s fury against me. That’s when she struck me and in a voice icy with disgust spat out these words: Only a fool would have believed it in the first place!

I was shocked. It was not merely that she had slapped me with a vengeance. I simply could not fathom why my sister—who loved her church and her minister and attended worship services, Sunday School, prayer group, choir practice, and her women’s group each and every week—could utter such a seemingly blasphemous statement against Belief.

Many years went by before I came to understand my sister’s ability to split belief apart from love of the religious institution, its leaders, and its authority. Such ability was, and still is, foreign to me. Several times in the past we had argued over this issue when I had blamed the theological beliefs of the institutional church for its hideous history: the witch burnings, the slaughter and greed of the Crusades, and so forth. She never agreed with me, insisting that: You can’t blame the doctrine and principles of the institutional church. The church is not the institution; the church is the people who come together in worship.

Virginia, in those arguments, always seemed unaware that her logic was the same as that of a person who maintains: You can’t blame the doctrine and principles of the historically Christian organization the Ku Klux Klan. The Klan is simply the people who come together in fellowship in order to follow the values of their institution.

To me, an institution can and should be held accountable for its doctrines and principles. I also maintain that it is the responsibility of any member of an organization to learn what those beliefs and principles are, but I could never convince Virginia of this.

However, sixteen years after Virginia had spoken those fateful words, I heard a man speak them again, slightly rephrased, and in a totally different situation. By this time I had gone through many unusual circumstances. And so, this time I really understood the words on a deeper psychological level. This time the man was not speaking to me. He was not even aware of me walking up the prison stairs behind him.

He was speaking to a buddy about his former girlfriend when he was on the outside. He was saying: Yeah, she really dug me. I could get her to do anything I wanted her to do to and for me. Of course, I had to feed her a lot of love crap so that she would feel good and be willing to work for me, and I had to tell her a lot of other shit so that she would believe me. But, hell, if she was fool enough to believe it, that’s her problem!

He was an inmate of a medium security prison in the mid-west. I was a professor of philosophy and religious studies who, in addition to teaching courses on the main campus of the university, often taught courses at four off-campus sites—two of which were located within a men’s prison and within a women’s prison.

By that date I had learned that some prisoners were confidence men and women. I had also learned that quite a few of the ministers, priests, preachers, theologians, and biblical scholars whom I knew personally were also con artists. By now I had also realized that my ex-husband had been a con artist. More importantly, I finally understood that all con artists need dupes and fools in order for their schemes to be put into play. I realized that my sister had been correct. I had been such a fool.

This memoir or story of my life is really the tale of how and why I was a fool for religious con artists and for the doctrinal and faith artistry itself. Perhaps it can serve as a cautionary tale for believers.

CHAPTER 1

The Recurring Dream

Safely held in the strong and loving arms of a man with dark hair, a ten-month old baby gazes with delight at the beautiful stained glass window.

Look! Look at the sun streaming through the colors. Isn’t that wonderful, my love? the man seems to be saying as he swings the child around in his arms to gaze at the lovely sight.

The man holding the infant is standing upon a landing. From the first floor hallway of the home, stairs lead up to this landing. The brilliantly lighted window is at this level. Abruptly, the stairs turn at a right angle and proceed on up to the second floor of the house.

Man and child are fixed in time and space upon the landing in front of the colorful window, for the dream is always short and always ends at this point. But the feeling-tone of the dream stays with Faith: emotions of joy, safety, and love as she awakens to begin the day.

*     *     *

Years pass. Each time the dream occurs, Faith ponders the meaning of the recurring dream. She has no idea who the man or the baby is. The dream seems to be triggered by particularly stressful situations in her life, and she always feels better after she dreams that dream.

*     *     *

In 1982, Faith, now fifty-two, and her sister Virginia, four years older than she, are sitting in the living room of their parents’ home. The funeral for their mother is complete. The relatives and friends have returned to their homes. Faith and Virginia each take a deep breath, let it out, and begin to think about all the chores they must take care of before they can return to their own homes.

Did you sleep okay last night? Virginia asks Faith.

No, not during the first part of the night, Faith answered. But toward morning I had my old recurring dream, and after that I awakened and then fell back to sleep and slept better.

A recurring dream? Tell me about it, Virginia ordered politely, and settled back in her chair for the story. Faith relayed the gist of the dream in only a minute or two, and expected Virginia to murmur some noncommittal response.

Instead, Virginia immediately played Freud—sat up straight—and interpreted the dream. Why, that’s Daddy and you at our old house! You’ve just described the stairway with the window at the landing of our house at 421 Walnut Avenue. The colors came alive when the setting sun’s rays struck that stained glass design.

But, Virginia continued, How could you have any memory of that house? We were evicted from that house before you were a year old because Daddy lost his job with the Pennsylvania Railroad during the Depression and couldn’t keep up the mortgage.

"I don’t have any conscious memories of that house or that time, Faith answered. But, maybe, my dream came from my sub-conscious mind."

Faith’s glib answer masked the conflict and tumult she felt: happiness that the comforting dream had a genuine basis in reality and a tie to a long dead father and a long-lost home, but also sadness—a sadness that she was at a loss to explain to her sister, let alone to herself.

In the years to come, Faith came to understand that sadness. Bringing the dream into the cold light of day and conscious interpretation somehow erased the dream mechanism itself. Never again did the dream recur. Even in times of great stress, she never again felt the comfort and safety of those loving arms or the ephemeral beauty of the window at the landing. She would have to travel the steps and stairs of life without the emotional cushion of the recurring dream. And yet its conscious interpretation provided her with solid knowledge that her father had truly loved her.

CHAPTER 2

The Decisions Made For the Child

Six weeks after she was released from the maternity ward, Hilda brought her infant daughter Faith to the altar, or, more precisely, to the communion rail three steps down from the altar of the Methodist Episcopal Church on the fourth Sunday in November 1930.

The focal point of the small Protestant church was not its altar but a picture painted within an alcove above the altar. In the picture, Jesus is kneeling in prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane. His eyes are lifted to heaven. But, in this church, heaven appears to be in the vicinity of the prized pipe organ—a luxury in this church that served the religious needs of a working class neighborhood that was eight blocks away from the tracks of the Pennsylvania Railroad.

Baptism for her baby was not Hilda’s goal. Faith would be baptized on the next Sunday set aside for baptisms in the Methodist liturgical calendar. What Hilda desired on this particular occasion was to be a part of the special dedication ceremony that took place on Missionary Sunday. Held every other fourth Sunday of the month, Missionary Sunday alternated with Temperance Sunday.

Dressed all in white, Hilda prodded the elbow of her proud but nervous husband David to suggest that he carry his daughter to the front of the church. Picking up the baby in his left arm, David offered Hilda his right arm; mother, father, and child proceeded up the aisle. The preacher came down from his pulpit to meet the family at the communion rail. After taking the infant in his own arms, the minister asked Hilda and David to kneel. Then he announced to the congregation: Today, Mr. and Mrs. David Hartmann are dedicating their newborn daughter Faith to the glory of God through service to the Lord. When she becomes of age and receives the necessary training, she will be ordained as a missionary of the Methodist Episcopal Church and will labor in the foreign mission fields. Please stand for the dedication prayer and for the hymn number 410: We’ve a Story To Tell To the Nations."

In the years to come, Hilda would remind Faith over and over again that her life had a definite and set plan and she must not deviate from it: she was to be a missionary to the heathen and save their souls from hell and damnation. It was a profound, life-altering decision made for her, without her own choice. Faith never felt that she had the right to choose a different vocational path for herself, for she would be rebelling against God’s will for her.

Hilda’s second decision, also made for Faith as an infant, affected Faith’s childhood, teenage, and early adult life—albeit not in such a momentous form as the first decision. That second decision was made for Faith on the following fourth Sunday: the fourth Sunday of December 1930. This time, the second dedication occurred on Temperance Sunday.

David and Hilda again presented themselves at the communion rail. The preacher again came down from his pulpit to meet the family. This time he turned to the congregation—to the third pew on his left, to be specific—and nodded to a four and one-half year old child sitting all alone, and said, Virginia, you may come up front and join your family, for you have already been dedicated to this worthy cause.

Mrs. Gates, the president of the WCTU (The Women’s Christian Temperance Union), converged upon the now complete family group from her seat in one of the front pews. She carried a white satin ribbon tied into a bow upon an embossed pledge card. As she pinned the ribbon to the infant’s gown, the preacher intoned: "Do you, David and Hilda, promise to raise this child Faith in a home where temperance is faithfully observed and no alcohol will ever be served? Do you promise to teach Faith the evils of strong drink, sign this pledge for her today, and encourage her to attend the Youth Temperance Council and sign her own pledge when she is older?"

Answering in the affirmative, David and Hilda signed the pledge card, and rose from their knees. The minister and Mrs. Gates shook their hands. All returned to their respective places in the church, and the congregation settled back in their pews to listen to the morning’s sermon on Demon Rum. Within the sermon, the preacher expressed the political worry, relevant at that time, that the Devil might encourage voters to end prohibition in the next presidential election.

The baby, however, let out a howl. Was it a cry of pain, hunger, or frustration? Maybe it was an omen, a sign that two life affecting decisions, made for her within a two-month time span, were simply too much for an infant to bear.

CHAPTER 3

The Basement

My very earliest memories are of living in a basement adjacent to a coal cellar and the coal-fired furnace. Gloomy darkness for most of the day, and fear of getting too close to the fire when the furnace door was open were my predominant childish perceptions. An older cousin has supplied me with the following description of the layout of that basement which was part of her childhood home in which we lived:

The basement in this home built in 1928 was called a finished" basement with a cement floor and lathe and plaster on the walls. It was a definite improvement over the dark, dank cellars with dirt floors found in some older homes. Its most modern features were a toilet set in an enclosed closet in one corner of the basement, and running water from two spigots to which hoses were attached every Monday when the washing machine with its clumsy hand wringer was wheeled in front of the spigots. The floor drain which carried off the washing machine water could also serve a secondary purpose as a drainage area for water used in cooking and/or sponge baths.

Near the furnace and the spigot area stood a gas water heater and two gas burners that had been originally intended only to heat extra water for the weekly laundry. All other days of the week the burners could be utilized as hot plates for cooking meals if necessary.

In the coolest corner of the basement stood a small ice box with room only for the huge block of ice and a smaller area for keeping milk, eggs, meat, and bread cool."

Only Aunt Amy and Uncle Bert who owned the house and lived upstairs had a genuine refrigerator. This electric refrigerator was a marvel and the envy of the rest of the neighborhood that kept the ice-man busy on his twice weekly rounds hauling blocks of ice for the ice-boxes in those other homes.

Uncle Bert and Aunt Amy could afford an electric refrigerator because Bert had not lost his job with the Pennsylvania Railroad. He was one of the lucky men who, during the Depression, were only bumped down two or three job categories to employment with a smaller paycheck. Therefore, he had been able to keep up the mortgage payments on his house. Because of his own innate kindness plus a case of survivor’s guilt brought on by a fire and brimstone preacher at the Methodist Episcopal Church, Bert invited his out of work brother-in-law and his family to move into his basement until the Pennsylvania Railroad could rehire its laid-off workers.

Mama, Daddy, my older sister Virginia, and I lived in this basement from two months before my first birthday to about six months after my fourth birthday. My memories from this time period are short, fleeting, sometimes painful, and sometimes colorful.

Dim gloominess is my predominant memory of the inside of the basement itself, for there were only three small windows set in the basement walls, and they were, of course, situated well above the line of sight of a small child. Only one light bulb hung from the center of the basement ceiling. In the winter months, there was an additional dim glow emanating from the cracks around the door of the coal-burning furnace itself. This dim light burst into brightness whenever David, my father, either stoked the coals or shoveled more of the hard yet sooty black rocks into the open furnace door.

Bright red color is my main memory of what was outside of the basement. The basement door opened out onto the back yard. Daddy had built an arbor shaped trellis for climbing red rose bushes he had planted next to the door. He tended the flowering plants with love and care until they had spread up, over, and around the trellis. These roses thrilled me every time Daddy talked with me as he pruned the bushes and trained their prickly branches to climb upon the wooden slats of the trellis. As June passed into July, the red of the roses faded and died, but red radishes pulled from the soil of the garden that Daddy had dug, planted, and weeded, again brought red color into my young life. Red tomatoes ripened in August. Then, in September, the dark red or purple of beets continued to supply delight. I wished I had a crayon the color of the beet juice in the cooking pan.

Stairs, however, trigger painful memories from those basement years. Basement stairways in that era and in that part of Pennsylvania were built at a steep angle and were open, without risers. The handrail was placed at adult height, as well. Coming down to the basement from my aunt’s kitchen in the main part of the house, I fell down those stairs and landed upon the hard cement. I have no memory of the physical pain of the fall but only of the emotional pain because of Mama’s anger at me. My sister Virginia remembers our mother’s words to me as something close to the following:

Faith, you clumsy and disobedient child! my mother scolded. I’ve told you, and told you, to be more careful on those stairs! That’s the second time you’ve fallen downstairs. The first time was at our own home, when God punished David and made him lose his job with The PRR. God must be punishing you, too, for your disobedience.

CHAPTER 4

The Sand Box

My very first memory from a place outside of my home is of playing in the sandbox of the nursery room at our Methodist Episcopal Church. Perhaps I was two to three years old, for psychologists’ studies of memory say this is the average age at which young children retain their earliest memories.

It is not profound. I report this simply to show how church colored even my very earliest memory.

That I was concentrating on building some tall structure out of the sand was the first part of the memory. The second part of the memory is that a pleasant woman walked by. She smiled at me (I was playing alone) and praised me for working so hard on my construction project. That’s going to be good, she insisted as she passed on into the sanctuary.

Perhaps I wasn’t used to praise, for a warm, happy feeling that filled me was the final part of this early memory.

CHAPTER 5

The Piano, I

Mama was pounding out the melody to an old-time hymn on the ivory keys of a mahogany colored Steinway baby grand piano. The women in mother’s Young Ladies’ Methodist Episcopal Church Sunday School Class were belting out the words: When the Roll is Called Up Yonder I’ll Be There.

My mother, who had recently celebrated her fortieth birthday, was the teacher of this class for single young women from the age of eighteen to the time they married. The occasion for the songfest was the class’s monthly get-together that had been previously held at the church building. Now, it could be held in our home since we no longer lived in the basement of my aunt and uncle’s house.

The young women were seated upon the moth-eaten grey-green mohair couch, a matching mohair armchair, a beige ottoman, a rocking chair, and various straight-backed chairs brought into the living room from the dining room for the occasion. Taking up fully one-third of the space in the room, the 1879 Steinway was Mama’s pride and joy.

Before Mama had begun to play, she had asked the young women to bow their heads in prayer to give thanks for the beautiful piano. Then my mother told the story of how she was given the piano by an old man at church when he learned that she would use it in her home for religious purposes like this one of a monthly meeting of a Sunday School class.

A four and one-half year old child at the time, I sat on the floor and watched the young women listening to Mama tell the story. Next, Mama swung her legs around the side of the piano bench, sat up straight, placed her fingers upon the keys, and announced that the first song would be When the Roll Is Called Up Yonder I’ll Be There. I rolled or somersaulted back and forth across the small open space in front of the feet of the young women every time the word R . . . o . . . l . . . l burst forth from their mouths as they were singing the chorus to the hymn. The young women laughed and Mama smiled. It was a memory that would stay with me for a lifetime, but little did I know that it was to be one of the last times that I saw my mother really happy.

CHAPTER 6

The Birthday Party

My first invitation to a birthday party! I was happy and excited as I dressed myself in my sister’s hand-me-down party or church dress.

Because I was almost five years old, I could manage putting on all the clothing by myself, but I still needed my mother’s help with the button at the back of the neckline and the tying of the bow in the sash attached to the back of the waistline. Next, Mama helped me practice tying the laces on my shoes. I tried my best to concentrate on the bows, but I was so very excited that I couldn’t concentrate and Mama completed the task for me.

Since the birthday party for my friend Dorothy was located just two doors away from my own home, I could walk to the exciting affair by myself. We no longer lived in the dark and dismal basement of my aunt and uncle’s home. Now we lived in our own home almost directly across the street from my relatives’ house.

I was standing by my front porch steps as my mother gave me last minute instructions. In my eagerness to be off to the party, I was skipping from one edge of the sidewalk to the other as I clutched the birthday present in my hands.

Any neighbor passing by would have expected to hear normal comments and/or admonitions such as My, don’t you look pretty in your party dress! or Have a good time at the party or Mind your manners or even Don’t spill any ice cream and cake on your clean dress.

Instead of these normal last minute instructions, what my mother actually said was: Be a good Christian, and Think of the happiness of the other children.

In addition, Mama admonished me: Don’t think of yourself and your wants. Remember that Saint Paul in 1st Corinthians, chapter 13, of the King James Bible says: ‘Love suffereth long, and is kind; love envieth not; love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up, doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil; rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth; beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all thing, endureth all things.’

Suddenly, all my happy anticipation and excitement vanished. I stopped skipping and answered, Yes, Mama. Then with drooping head, I walked slowly to the party.

CHAPTER 7

Shirley Temple Curls

Shirley Temple movies were all the rage in the 1930s, but fundamentalist Christian preachers forbade their church members to go to sinful picture shows. Hilda’s minister, the Reverend Mr. Evans, preached many a hell fire and damnation sermon against movie going, and Hilda faithfully stayed away from the immoral theater. Neither did she permit her two daughters to attend Saturday movie matinees with their friends and the neighborhood mothers.

But Hilda had a glaring weakness: vanity. She was vain enough to want her daughters to look stylish—and style for a five-year old girl was a head-full of Shirley Temple curls. Ringlets like those are not too difficult to form if a child has naturally curly hair, as Shirley Temple did. But when a child had fine, straight hair as did her child, the procedure was tedious and time-consuming. In the 1930s, it was also dangerous, for hot curling irons were used to achieve the desired effect, and a wiggly child could very easily get burned.

Hilda, in spite of the weakness toward vanity, had a great strength: an innate love of teaching. And so she invented a clever tactic to keep her five-year-old daughter, Faith, still enough to use the hot curling iron on her blond head.

ABCDEFG, HIJKLMNOP, . . . Mother and daughter sang the alphabet song over and over again, on Sunday mornings as Hilda manipulated the hot instrument to form curl after curl. Since there was no kindergarten in the city where Faith lived and since she could not start first grade for another year, Faith was pleased to be learning her ABCs. When this got boring for Faith, her Mother would begin: ZYX, WVUTS, . . . and they would recite the alphabet backwards:  . . . RQPO, NMLK, JIHG, FEDCBA. Three months worth of Sunday mornings and curls went by in this fashion. When Faith squirmed too much, but the mass of curls was not yet complete, Hilda would switch to the German language and they would recite the alphabet in German.

After four months of ABCs—backwards, forwards, and in German—the Shirley Temple Curls were still in vogue. Hilda switched tactics to keep her daughter still. She turned to spelling, phonics, and Christian Church doctrine!

Since Hilda read from the Bible daily at family prayer sessions called Family Worship, Faith was already familiar with words from the scriptures. And, since handling a hot curling iron and reading cannot be accomplished at the same time without dire consequences, Hilda resorted to extemporaneous lectures on church doctrine—weaving spelling and phonics into the lessons. Being a Methodist, she never considered these lectures as being too advanced for a five-year-old because, as she told Faith, John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church, had learned to read at the feet of his mother when he was only four years old. Wesley’s home schooling textbook was the Bible. Hilda deemed it perfectly logical, therefore, to combine phonics with lessons in religious doctrine.

‘G . . . o . . . d, Faith’s mother began, spelling the word and then giving the pronunciation of each separate vowel and consonant. She continued with the words Jesus and Holy Ghost, carefully explaining both the phonics and the spelling. After several Sundays and several sessions with both the curling iron and teaching, mother and child arrived at the word Cre-a-tion. Hilda gave the phonetic sound of the word: Kre-a-shun," before she launched into the doctrinal belief that God created the world and declared it to be good before Adam and Eve ruined everything by their Original Sin of disobedience!

Ouch, Mama, Faith cried, wincing from a burn, for Hilda got carried away in exuberance for her topic and had left one curl too long upon the hot iron. Her mother apologized for inflicting the pain and moved on to a new curl. By means of this pattern of teaching combined with curling, by the time Shirley Temple curls went out of fashion, Faith had absorbed, although not necessarily understood, a very simple grounding in basic church doctrine.

CHAPTER 8

The Piano, II

Dusting the ivory keys and the carvings on the thick ornate legs of the baby grand piano with a soft cloth, I was happy to be doing the dusting chores around the house, even though I was only five years old and none of my playmates had to do the dusting and dry the dishes. My older sister Virginia, now age nine, had the responsibility for washing the dishes and vacuuming the carpets upstairs and down.

Our mother was often sick and took to her bed. I wondered why, when I was sick, I was sent to my bed but my mother took to her bed. Did it have something to do with her nervous breakdown? What was broken about my mother, I wondered. I couldn’t see any broken arms or legs. And when I asked my mother if she hurt or had to vomit or wanted the hot water bottle, Mama said No in an almost mean voice and pulled the covers up over her ears and turned her face away from me.

I turned back to my dusting of the piano ledges where the many hymnbooks were piled. I liked everything about this Steinway and I was humming a Sunday School song about I Have the Joy, Joy, Joy—Down In My Heart.

When Mama and her sisters gathered about this piano to sing their favorite religious songs, they stopped quarreling and began to smile. Was this a miracle? I didn’t really know what a miracle was except that Mama was always praying for one to happen, and that a miracle was always connected with money—or, rather, the lack of it.

My mother had emphasized over and over: God performed a miracle and sent me this piano even in the depths of the Depression when we had no money! Praise the Lord for His goodness!

Often I had heard my mother explain the miracle to a neighbor, or the milkman, or the Fuller Brush salesman: God put it in Mr. Ritchey’s heart to leave me the piano in his will! All I had to pay for was the cost of moving the piano from Mr. Ritchey’s house when he died.

And so, I dusted the piano with both a sacred and a scared feeling in the pit of my hungry stomach. The sacred feeling came from all the miracle stories. The scared and hungry feeling came from empty cupboards. I wished that blueberry dumpling and cinnamon-roll miracles could happen more often.

CHAPTER 9

The Decision Made By the Child

You’re just like your Aunt Amy—you both have that wicked self-will!

Mother never screamed at her children when she was angry or displeased with us. In fact, she would emphatically deny that she even felt anger. Her normal, pleasantly pitched voice simply became cold, hard, and emphatic. And, if you watched her eyes, you could see them change color from cool sky blue to icy-cold steel-like blue.

Mama was lecturing my older sister, nine-year-old Virginia, about the evils of egotism and willfulness. Virginia, at first, bravely stood her ground—her spine defiantly straight and rigid. I, on the other hand, was cowering behind the door into the dining room and listening attentively to every word being said: Sinful and rebellious! The Lord hates sin and He punishes rebellion against His will.

I peeked through a crack below one of the hinges on the door. Virginia’s posture began to wilt. Her gaze dropped to the floor, for she couldn’t bear to see those scary blue eyes looking deep into her defiant soul.

Mama’s tone dropped a few more degrees: You must promise you will never, I repeat, never say or do those things again.