preacher works the crowd

Saw a mental health theropist the other day, she says I live in a fantasy world. Can't deny that, but then where would my little stories come from?  Another question that she worked into the conversation, what unfinished busines do I have with my mother. Not so easy to answer.   

Never won Mother's aproval. When you are little it's hey mom look at me, do a big cannon ball splash at the pool.  Then real world starts and you never do well enough in school, and she isn't interested in you playing sports. Never attended a single game. 

She didn't aprove of the professions I ended up in, maybe the school teaching but behind my back she is wondering why I'm just a sub and never got a real job. 

She wanted me to hook-up with a woman who would lead me to the Lord, not spend the formitive years of my kids lives running around town trying to have as many woman as possible before I had to get married and settle down again. Sixty miles out of town. Still not good enough. 

She totally disaproved of us selling our junk on the street every Sunday instead of being in church. Easter sunday too!!!!

Did I do any or all of that in defiance of mother? Still acting out the feeling of rage I had when she attacked Justin and I with the belt back in Walla Walla days.  Later in that story we are at First Church, down town across from a park. Big and intemidating compared to the little dimly lit hall that was our church and mom is in her best wool suit, gray and at the end of preaching the tune I hated from the pit of my being started "Just as I am with out one plea ..." My teeth grit, alter call.

Same as with testomony, I didn't have to go myself yet, great relief when dad changed jobs into a church that didn't have that ritual. Mom went down and I'm not going to stay in the pew of a strange church by my self so I'm with her kneeling at the alter.  The music drones on over and over, preacher encouraging others to come on down to the alter.  Take a better writer than me to paint that picture.

One wonders if mom prayed forgiveness for the belt attacks. 

I took the hem of her nice wool jacket in my mouth and chewed as big a wad of it as I could, as if it were chewing gum or that black tar stuff the city used to fill pot holes and us kids could brake off and chew after the workers moved on up the street.  

Probably ruined the jacket. I remember her fiding the wet spot but not any punishment.  Some of the drifty things I used to do were labeled "diddling" and that's just something Paul does.

At our church, Mom and us kids didn't have to go down to the front for alter call.  Probably get some of the church folks wondering to themselves what's she done to need prayer and forgiiveness?  

This part didn't stick in memory so much.  As a kid there were a number of different fantasies I went into the instant church started and at best the stuff happening up front seemed like sounds and shadows from the other room while a guy is drifing off to sleep.  Preacher has to work the crowd.

No one wants to be first, and the song goes around again. I want to say the preacher gives a sales pitch over the music but maybe my memories from fifty-two are sketchy.  

Maybe he smells whisky or tobbaco on some guy's breath, looks him in the eye until he comes on down, maybe someone else not getting along at home comes down for couples counsling from the Lord. Girls who break Manual rules on dress or makeup might tearfully come on down with the tenth time the chorus goes around. Some people come just to get the whole thing over with and go home in time to see Jack Benny on TV.

"Just as I am ... slow and with feeling.  Became a chant almost like the Nami yo-yo people I ran into a few years later. Did they use singing bowls?  

I chanted for something I shouldn't have glad I didn't get, but then maybe if I really believed it might have happened, who knows?  

Got a pimple fact teen-ager working for me in the boat that year instead.  Except for a couple mishaps that were my fault, we had a fun sunner together on the boat. He refused to go out to the trolling cockpit where I left my coffee cup, so it never got washed with the other dishes. That's when I started the tridition of a special cup I use every day that rarely if ever gets washed.  

So there.  Somehow I got from the dim wasp infested church hall out on Alder Street in Walla Walla to the trolling cockpit in my boat, rolling free early in the morning, hot coffee in my mug waiting for the first salmon to hit the gear. 

Wonder if mother would have aproved if she knew how hard we really worked in that little boat?