What Were They Thinking?
24 Blessing
“LORD, MY SAVIOR, if it be thy will, bring my feet safely to the ground again that I may continue to serve you. Purge my soul of hate and fear. Hold those I love in your loving care. Lord, thy will be done. Lord? Are you there?”
I pushed the little Cub away from the gas tanks and finished my walk-around. I knew every inch of this little plane. I’d restored it and kept it putting along in the air for over fifteen years. I thought I’d just go up a while and listen to the propeller beating against the wind. Maybe I’d do a loop over to Auburn and visit the Cord Museum. I was still a little numb. I’d invested so much of my life, my being, in that church.
“You aren’t going without me,” Bea said from behind me. She was dressed for flying in neat slacks and a blouse so we could stop to eat or shop anywhere. She carried a small case that I knew contained a change of underwear and toiletries for each of us so we could spend the night somewhere if we wanted. In her other hand was a thermos of coffee. Was she worried that I would fly away and leave her? Or that I might go up and not come down? Or that I might come down?
“My love, whither I goest.” I kissed her and then lifted her up to the door. I crawled in behind her and started the engine.
“And where would that be today?”
“How about lunch in Kalamazoo?” I suggested. “We could walk around the Air Zoo Museum for a while. Then maybe choose someplace else for dinner and spend the night?”
“Just the two of us, John. The two of us against the world.”
“I haven’t seen the ranch in over a year,” I said. What started out as a holiday flight had been extended. I’d called the office and simply said that I was taking time off as personal time to tend to family matters. It was common knowledge that my father was ill. I had a competent bank manager and as president could take some time away. It would give me a chance to see if he was ready to take over the operation.
We’d hopped a couple hundred miles a day, making it as far north as Mackinac Island, Michigan before we turned south and made stops in Ohio and even Lexington, Kentucky. We’d picked up a couple of changes of clothes and did laundry several times.
And I reconnected with my wife.
Bea and I had always had a comfortable relationship and had known passion in our younger days. But it seemed raising a family and dealing with business had taken a toll on our sex life. During our tour, we rediscovered what we’d been missing.
“It’s a wonderful idea, John. I miss the kids. And I haven’t seen the ranch since they finished all the work on it. Do you think they’d be too busy with their summer productions to have us visit?”
“From what Hayden said, there are more than forty of them living down there this summer. We’ll stay at the hotel and try to only visit when they aren’t working. They must take some time off,” I said. I thought for a minute, looking out at the ground moving beneath us. “I miss them, too. It’s going to be difficult having them living so far away. I wish we lived nearer.”
“Let’s not be too pushy,” Bea said. “I’m sure they are stretching their wings, and enjoying being out from beneath the eagle eye of Papa John.”
“Papa John? Is that how they think of me? An eagle eye on them?”
“Oh, they started calling me Mama Bea when I stayed down here with them last summer. It’s only logical that they would call you Papa John. It’s how they refer to all the parents.” She carefully avoided answering my question about the eagle eye. Was I always so critical?
“They are good kids, Bea. And young adults. I’m not going to stand in judgment over any of their choices. I’ve seen too much judgmentalism. I intend to simply welcome them into loving arms and support them in their life decisions.”
“Really, John? No matter what?”
“No matter what, I still love them. And if they are happy… If Cassandra wants to let Mary into her life with Josh… Well, it seems to be working for Hayden, Marilyn, and Anna. I can think of worse things.”
The moment for me to prove my words came sooner than I anticipated.
“There is something we want to tell you, Daddy,” Cassandra said.
“Oh? Does it have to do with the ring you are wearing?” I said. I’d seen the ring on her finger as she approached us sitting by the fire.
“Well, it could have. It’s not really mine. I just borrowed it to get the conversation going.” She took the ring off and handed it to Josh, who put it in his pocket. “He has to ask my father’s permission before he can ask me to marry him,” she said.
“And what makes you think I’d give this scalawag permission to marry my daughter?” I laughed. “I’ll have to think about it for a couple of years.” Marriage. They were planning to be a traditional married couple, not just handfasted in the clan rituals. This was good.
“That’s okay,” Cassie said. “We aren’t in a hurry. But I’m not giving you grandchildren until I’m married. Think about that, too.” That got us going. Jokes about being too young to be grandparents. I expected, knowing their propensity for the dramatic, that Josh would propose right then. “Mom and Dad, before Josh ever gets around to asking your permission, we need to tell you some other things.”
“Honey, I know you’ve been… active together. I’ve put aside my judgment. I’ve done my best to raise you in the love of God and love of family. The way God guides you is not mine to judge.”
“Thank you, Daddy. I’ve always loved you and Mommy. And I believe I’ve grown in faith even more with a partner who shares it with me,” she said. I was so proud of her and her chosen mate. “We live under two different systems,” she continued. “We recognize that according to the church and the state, a marriage can only exist between one man and one woman. That’s why Josh will ask your permission to marry me and he will become my husband and I his wife. But our clan recognizes that unions may exist among more than two people and that even unions of the same sex are possible. We talk about our compañera, or boyfriends and girlfriends. We are what any other boyfriend or girlfriend would be. Kind of exploring. But we also have cónyuge within the clan. Cónyuge have made a long-term intimate commitment to each other. Except for all the church blessings and state licenses, we consider it about the same as a marriage, but we don’t use the same words so people don’t get confused. When two or more people agree that they are on track to become cónyuge but aren’t ready to quite make the commitment, we call them novia. It is the same to us as being engaged and being someone’s fiancée. Mommy and Daddy, I want you to meet my novia, Josh and Mary.” Well, Bea and I had just talked about it in the plane. I wasn’t surprised. “And Brian.” Bea started to giggle. What could I do?
“I should have known,” I sighed. “I did know, at least in part. Brian told me at your graduation that you would be Josh’s first wife.” I looked straight at Brian and scowled. “Don’t blame me. I tried to protect you from this.”
“Daddy!”
I’d made brave statements in the privacy of our plane, listening to the engine and the wind. I’m not going to stand in judgment over any of their choices. I intend to simply welcome them into loving arms and support them in their life decisions. It was time to put them in action—to prove I was the kind of man I wanted to be.
“Cassandra, my baby girl, I won’t try to understand and I won’t try to use all the terms associated with this. I will not refer to my sons-in-law or my daughter’s wife. When you are ready, I will simply refer to you all as my daughters and my sons.” Cassie hugged me and then Mary hugged me. Josh and Brian both kissed Bea on the cheek and she clamped them under her arms.
“I thought I’d only get one. Now I get three!” she said happily. Well, that summed it up. I now had two daughters and two sons.
It was considerably harder to tell them I wasn’t going back to the church Cassie had grown up in. When I explained, though, I think both of them were relieved they wouldn’t need to be married there. I sat for a long time at the campfire that night and Brian sat companionably with me. He was, indeed, the leader of this entire clan, what they called their patrón. I think I met every person living on the ranch and that must have been everyone in the clan. They’d even collected a few who hadn’t gone to high school with them. They were part of a clan, yes, but more than that, they were friends. I thought back on my life and realized that I had very few people I could call friends and most of them had become so only since the founding of the dating group.
And the young man next to me was one of them. Not just a son, but a friend. Eventually, I told him the whole story.
“I have no faith, Brian. I concede. You were right. I was wrong.”
“John,” he said and laid a hand on my shoulder. “Don’t give up your faith. It wasn’t the problem. Still isn’t. That there were evil people that influenced things beyond your control—that isn’t your fault. You were always willing to listen. When I brought Cassie home as an impudent neighbor brat, you listened to what we had to say. You discerned the good and the bad and adjusted. When Josh was broken—I won’t say you fixed him—you loved him. You brought him back from the brink of suicide when he despaired over Denise’s death. Those children in that Sunday school class have seen a glimpse of love and respect. Once having seen it, they won’t settle for anything less. I wouldn’t be surprised to find that a new class enters high school with their own dating agreement.”
“Would you make them part of your clan if they did?”
“Maybe. If they wanted. But they won’t know about our clan. They’ll know about what a good man taught them. Maybe they will create their own clan.” He paused and we stared into the flames some more. I hadn’t realized that he really respected me. “John, when we put together the agreements to expand the renovation of the barn into the rest of the loft, help Lionel and Lamar build another duplex out here on the ranch, get the property subdivided, and build us a new house, Anna asked me to help her run the numbers and make sure everything was solid. I had the opportunity to see things that I shouldn’t have under any other circumstances. I want you to know that I have never disclosed this to anyone else in the clan, and I never will. But thank you for funding the renovation of the barn. You can’t even imagine what I felt that day. How I despaired for my clan. I can only imagine some great and benevolent God turning to you and saying, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant.’ Don’t lose your faith, John. Your faith has never been an issue.”
“What have I done? How have I come to the point where as a fifty-one-year-old Christian, I am comforted by a nineteen-year-old atheist who tells me not to lose my faith?” I laughed.
“Really? I don’t think I’m an atheist.”
“An agnostic?”
“No. I think that to be an atheist or an agnostic, you have to care. I don’t. I don’t care if there is a God or not, or if there are twenty of them or hundreds. It’s irrelevant. There are good people and there are people who are not as good. I won’t even call them bad, though I do believe that the pain we inflict upon each other is evil. People shouldn’t treat people the way your preacher treated you. Think about it. There was no purpose other than the preservation of his power. You had purpose in the way you set rules for Cassie and disciplined her. He didn’t try to bring you closer to God. He didn’t attempt to deliver his child to the Lord. He only thought to destroy. Isn’t that one of the names you give the devil? The great destroyer?”
“I may have to visit here periodically just to have theological arguments with you, Brian. You are good for my soul.”
“I hope you will visit us often, John. Though you might want to give the girls a little more warning before you fly over. And I’ll talk with you all you want. But there is really nothing about my religion, or even my politics, that requires me to convince you that I’m right and you are wrong.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” I said.
“Nor does it require me to listen to you try to convince me.”
“Son, may we always be able to talk, to disagree, and to still love. Thank you.”
Bea and I made repeated visits to the ranch over the course of the summer and fall. We even got to sit in the audience for one of Elaine’s performances. A very funny woman. More and more, Bea and I were drawn to the ranch—not just the fact that our daughter was there, but to the sense of community we felt. I started investigating the possibility of a job in Bloomington. I even enjoyed my conversations with Brian.
It was the conversation with Cassandra at Thanksgiving that sent me to my knees in prayer.
She asked me to go for a ride and at first, I thought she meant she wanted to fly—something that was unusual for her. Instead, she handed me a pair of cowboy boots. Apparently, Josh and I wear the same shoe size. She led me to the horses and saddled two little mares. Carl came by to help secure things and adjusted the length of the stirrups for me. It wasn’t the first time I’d ever ridden, but I wasn’t an expert. I was impressed that Cassie could handle the horses so easily.
We rode out toward the woods. I pointed out the field next door to the ranch and suggested it would make a nice airstrip.
“You’d have to move down here to manage it,” she said. “That wouldn’t be a bad thing.”
“How are you getting along down here? IU is certainly a different kind of campus than Bethel. Is it all you hoped for?”
“The campus is the size of the entire City of Mishawaka. Not in geography but in population. I had no idea what a small-town girl I was,” she laughed. We rode on and she opened a gate to let us pass through to the neighboring farm. It seemed we were miles from any human sound other than our own voices. “Daddy, I need to talk to you about my love. I need to tell you about me and Josh. But also about me and Mary. And me and Brian. And I want to ask your blessing on us. We’ve talked around the issue but I can’t go any further until I know you understand and can bless us. I’m going to marry Josh but we will also be lovers with Mary and Brian. Yes, I know Brian has many lovers and I don’t expect him to forsake any of them, but there is no question in my mind that we’ve been moving to this point for seven years. That’s what I need to tell you about.”
I didn’t interrupt her. I didn’t tell her I knew about her meeting in the woods. I didn’t tell her I was surprised at the story of her first kiss or her breakup or how she’d experimented with both Brian and with girls before she and Josh committed to each other. I just listened. Though what she told me was sometimes painful to hear, it was also filled with so much love that it brought tears to my eyes.
We rode for a long time. When she finished her story, I began mine. I started at the obvious place—having used her dating agreement as a way of working with the junior high Sunday School class and the subsequent castigation and ejection from the church. But I also used the opportunity to tell her a little about my time in Vietnam and the origin of the prayer that was framed on the wall behind my desk.
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
the courage to change the things I can,
and the wisdom to know the difference.
I told her about becoming an alcoholic and the struggle to live a life that was an example to my child.
And I told her how much I loved her and how proud I was of the young woman she had become.
In the end, we agreed to spend four weeks in prayer and meet again on Christmas Day. If we were both at peace with this decision, I would give her my blessing and would join in celebrating their union.
I believe she was relieved that I didn’t simply jump in with a blessing immediately. It seemed that would be like forcing the issue. If she was blessed, then she must follow through. She quickly agreed.
“Daddy, Josh and I have talked. We’ve talked with Mary and Brian. We’ve prayed. We are ready. Will you please give your blessing on our union?”
“You have my blessing, daughter. Live your life in love.”
It seemed like such a simple thing to say, though it had cost me several nights of sleep as Bea and I also prayed. In the end, it was the serenity to accept the things we could not change.
Bea and I went to the big house on the day after Christmas, invited for breakfast. We planned to drive back to Mishawaka early in the afternoon. We saw the four come downstairs into the family room dressed in matching green pajamas. They call them gis. It was obvious to see that they were a single family. They fairly glowed. I simply held out my arms to them and Bea joined us in a hug.
“May God bless you and keep you and make His face to shine upon you. May He lift up his countenance upon you and be gracious unto you. May the Lord give you peace and love all the days of your lives. Amen,” I said.
Everyone gathered around and Rose stepped forward.
“I believe that was your handfasting ritual,” she said. She had a spool of red thread in her hand and the four held their hands together as she wound the thread around them. It was a lovely ritual to affirm what we could all see. “In the interest of modesty, we left your red gis on the bed upstairs,” Rose concluded. They all kissed and ran upstairs.
“How long does it usually take to change clothes on an occasion like this?” Hayden asked.
“All day,” Rose laughed.
It didn’t on this occasion. They were soon back and we had a lovely brunch. Then Bea and I packed up and Don Whitaker joined us for the trip back north.
The blessing, I realized, was not just for my daughter or for her cónyuge. I truly wanted this casa, this clan, this ranch blessed by God. That was the day that Bea and I started seriously preparing ourselves to move to Bloomington. We didn’t know where yet. We didn’t know when. We knew, however, that this was going to be home for our children and our grandchildren.
We wanted to be near.
End Part III
Comments
Please feel free to send comments to the author at devon@devonlayne.com.
