Thoughts from Mark "Hat" Rackley

I’m Pink Lady Apple Yeggs and my friend, and brother-in-law, Deviled Yeggs suggested that I record each project that I set up in the hopes of reforming the people who continue to work for Lily the Pink Enterprises.  If for no other reason, it would show how God is at work.

I received a phone call from Dorothy Cahn late one afternoon.  I often got phone calls from the woman known as Dot Com, but this was different.  The usual phone call was, “I am sending you a new family. …”  The only additional information is how many children.

I feared the next of these as I had recently been benevolent to too many people by giving them large apartments when they could use a smaller apartment.  One example was Jemima and Easter, but she is at least pregnant now.  Then, I gave the newlyweds, Joseline and Kevin Johnson the matching apartment next to theirs.  Jochebed and Georges Evident had no children yet, but at least they use one of their two spare bedrooms for children that Jochebed wet nurses or children that are not feeling well.  But, there were a few empty bedrooms on our family floor of the main apartment building, just no more multiple bedroom apartments.  And I tried to keep families close.  The three apartment buildings further down the street were for more mature singles mostly, employees of Lily the Pink.  I had bought those apartments and began to renovate them so that the ladies that had been around for a while could feel like they had a nice place to live, something that did not remind them of their life as a prostitute.  But after the Washington state crew left, we had fallen behind on renovations.  The third floor of the main apartment building only had two apartments renovated and those were not comfortably occupied due to the dust factor of heavy construction.

So, maybe Dot Com was sending me someone that needed a large apartment, and she knew I had none at the moment except down the street.

Dot said, “Pink, I am sending you a family and this one may be a challenge.  Maybe not, but their story is frightening and extremely sad.  I told them that a team of people would meet them to welcome them to Lily the Pink.  Gwen Quinn might understand what they have been through.  Joseph Jones will understand the theology that they have been force fed.  I do not know if you will need your little female private detective, but she has a way of understanding things.  And maybe some of the preteens or teenagers.  Definitely have Menzie there.  You will have an immediate need for Jochebed and Greta Grunge.  I will say no more about that, but I know about Jochebed’s sixth sense.  She will take charge.  Let her.  You may want your father and Grannie Fannie.  This will be a large crowd that might intimidate them, but each that I mention may either be needed or they may be able to relate to what you will see.  I know you are due soon, and I hope this added burden does not complicate that.  But the family, besides their baggage that they bring, the spiritual baggage, emotional baggage, and disinformation baggage.  Heaven’s to Betsy, Pink, there are five of them and their combined physical baggage probably would not fill one medium suitcase.  Just expect their story to start the tears flowing.”

I hardly was able to say something like “We will be ready.”

I made the necessary phone calls.  I had Gwen and GrandPa, Joseph, Jochebed, and Greta come to my office.  Greta was trying to switch to night shift, physically, since one of the other nurses was going on vacation while scheduled for nights.  That was unusual since they usually chose graveyard shift to avoid one rotation of it.  PawPaw and Grannie Fannie were still playing with the children, even with Gwen’s children visiting.

I called Aunt Tensie’s lab and Sophie was there with Emmett.  I thought, why not both of them, since she wanted teenagers.  I invited Menzie and since she and Michael Rowe were studying together, he came also.  The guards would tell Dr. Quinn where he was.  But as it was, Dr. Quinn, alias Home Wrecker, came in early and decided to stay.  When Naomi came by to pick up Blaise and Sophie, she heard of the meeting and joined us.  I had no idea what I was going to face.  And since we had to find an apartment for a family of five, I invited Zuzka and Rota, one of Zuzka’s Latvian friends at Lily the Pink, who has become our housing manager.

I had a packed house in my office when Missy walked in the door and ushered in what I considered to be five children.  Missy introduced them, “Miss Pink, this is Thomas and Catherine ver Waarloosd.  They have three children, Reuben is the oldest.  Then there is Samantha.  And the baby that Catherine is holding is Levi.”

I did a quick inventory of Jacob’s first three sons: Reuben, Simeon, and Levi.  Simeon?  Samantha?  It might fit.  Their clothing could indicate Mennonite or Amish.  The clothing was definitely out of date and very plain.  Thomas and Catherine were young.  They had to be teenagers, but they had a weathered look.  They were both rather small, a little smaller than average, but maybe they had not finished growing.  The children looked about three, two, and a newborn.  Catherine held the baby and Thomas held Samantha in one arm and a tattered Bible in the other.

Gwen, who was sitting beside me behind my desk whispered in my ear, “Pink, ‘verwaarloosd’ is the Dutch word for neglected.  I think they are from near where I grew up.  Some of the valleys spoke Dutch, that is the Netherlands, not Deutsch, for German.”

I nodded to Gwen and smiled at Thomas, “What brings you to Tracy, Thomas?”

Thomas looked at the floor, as if praying.  He got Samantha to stand next to him.  Kanok came over from the play area and invited Reuben and Samantha to come play with them.  Valin was the oldest of Gwen’s rescues.  Then comes Kanok.  Of the rest, Thanh was just starting to walk, and Joon and Asha were now sitting up and pulling themselves up.  Catalina was still the baby, and Greta Grunge was holding her.  Greta could be used as a wet nurse so that Jochebed did not need to perform all of that function.

Jochebed was getting agitated, but I held up a finger.  I at least wanted introductions first.

Thomas finally spoke, “Cat and I just graduated high school.  We were married after finishing the one room school in the valley, and these are our children.  We were both the selected children to attend high school in the nearby town.  The valley merchant brought us into town in his wagon for produce and such along with a couple of other high school students.  Usually, the valley picks one student to represent the valley to go to higher learning each year.  Our year, with us married, they selected both of us.  My friends call me Tom, and they call Catherine Cat.  The town folk referred to us as Tomcat as when you saw one of us, you saw both of us, with few exceptions.  Reuben came in the summer after our freshman year.  Samantha came mid-summer the next year.  And Levi was recent.  We lived with my parents, and they took care of the children when we went to high school.  Then, the most unusual thing happened.  The valley announced a scholarship and even though Catherine had better grades, I was given the scholarship.  I was to attend Tracy Regional University for Science and Technology.  With a name like TRUST, I felt safe in coming here.  The scholarship would pay all our expenses for the first year.  But this morning when I arrived at the bursar’s office, there was only enough money for one semester of my tuition.  The fund that had a lot of money in it when we left seven days ago, I think, had plenty of money for tuition, books, room and board.  All the money except for the payment of the first semester, which was already sent to the university, had been drained.  We used all our money for the bus tickets.  We have a couple of suitcases at the bus station.  We have the keys, but we do not have enough money to retrieve our luggage.  We had food provisions, but only for a couple of days.  Then one missed car or missed bus after another.  We have little energy left, and no money in which to return home, since the scholarship money is all gone.”

Jochebed sighed, “Please, Miss Pink, I must speak.  Catherine, Cat, please give me the child.”  Catherine cradled the child in a defensive mode and shook her head.  “I will feed the child, Catherine, please.  All of you are malnourished.  In giving milk to the baby Levi, you become weaker, and Levi becomes malnourished because your milk that you produce is weak.  I will not leave this room with your child, but he needs nourishment.  Give me the child.”  With tears in her eyes, Catherine gave Jochebed the baby.  Jochebed turned to me and said.  “I texted Otto.  He is bringing food for them.  Something small.  Their stomachs have probably shrunk.”

Catherine softly cried.  Tom was stone-faced.

Gwen asked, “Are you Amish?  You wear clothing that might be Amish or Mennonite.”  Thomas had no idea what those were.  Then Gwen mentioned the name of a town.  Thomas’ eyes got brighter, and he mentioned his nearest town.  The high school teams had played each other.  Tom and Cat could never stay for sporting events, but he saw the names of the opponents on banners in the school hallways.  Gwen mouthed the words that they lived about three or four valleys further into the mountains from where she grew up.  Gwen turned back to Thomas to mention she had grown up as a gypsy not far from where they had lived.  Thomas and Catherine’s shoulders started to ease.

Otto came in with cheese biscuits and some small pepperoni roll bites.  Tom and Cat had the pepperoni rolls.  They gave a bite to Reuben, and they gave a cheese biscuit to Samantha and Reuben.  Otto also had milk for the children.  Tom and Cat only wanted water.  Greta put Catalina down for a nap in the nap room and then started “playing” with Reuben and Samantha.  She was really checking them for lice, diseases, and overall wellness.

I said, “Before we go any further, I want to assure you that we will make room for you here.  We do not have an apartment ready that is the size that you need…”

Rota spoke up, “The Williams wish to move to the third floor.  They have a one-bedroom apartment across the hall from Jemima and Easter’s apartment.  The small empty efficiency next door could be converted into more bedrooms and provide an extra bathroom.”

I asked, “Why do the Williams want to move?”

Rota sighed, “They have been unable to have children.  Blake is working for our construction contractor.  Penny is doing a good job in our bottling and packaging area.  They are satisfied here, but Jemima just announced her pregnancy.  Jos and Kev Johnson are next door making no mystery that they are trying to have a child.  Jochebed is a couple of doors down with one child or another staying the night.  I think the Williams just want to be alone.”

“Let me get the Williams to a doctor to see if something can be done about fertility, but isn’t the third floor uninhabitable at the moment?” I suggested.

Zuzka said, “We can place a blank in the HVAC to prevent dust drifting in that way.  We can wall off the hallway.  Rota came up with a wonderful design for the third floor that will make expanding apartments easier.  We are constructing an efficiency apartment and then two bedrooms, alternately down the entire floor on either side.  Doors will lead from the bedrooms to the apartments on either side.  Thus, removing a door cover and unlocking the door, we can have anything from an efficiency apartment to a four-bedroom apartment, depending on the people next door not needing those rooms.  And the door covers will look very nice, a drywall box over the doorframe.  But we only have the first two apartments set up that way, one on either side of the hall.  We will have to make the apartment inhabitable on the third floor.  Move the Williams.  Break down the wall between the apartments across from Jemima and Easter and the Johnsons, and then turn part of that into extra bedrooms.  We have done it before.  We have the blueprints.  We can start renovating the empty apartments now, but where do the ver … umm … I do not remember your names.”

Thomas said, “The people at school called us Tomcat, but our last name is ver Waarloosd.”

Zuzka smiled, “Yes, pardon my English.  I am still learning, Mr. Fur Var Loosed.”  At least she pronounced it accurately, almost.

Jochebed, with little Levi fed, burped, and getting sleepy, spoke up.  “There will be no discussion.  They will live with Georges and me until their apartment is finished.  They need care.  And as Tyler Hill taught me what indoor plumbing was and that we take showers every day and such things and I think I may have to teach them.  You see, Tomcat, I came from the part of Africa on the border of the grasslands and the jungle.  Other than mud huts with thatched roofs and a dirt floor, I had not seen a modern house until Tyler and I escaped extremists who wanted to kill Christians.”

Catherine asked, “Who is Tyler?”

I said, “Tyler Hill is our Purchasing supervisor.  He lives in Washington state, and he is married to the plant manager there, Anna Hill.”  Cat nodded, but I wondered if she had any concept of how far away Washington state was.

Tom said, “We know of indoor plumbing.  There was water to the toilet in the ‘Show Me’ house, and we had Boy and Girl restrooms at the high school.  But we have never taken a shower.  We always had our weekly bath on Saturday.  My father and I hauled in the water.  My mother heated it on the wood-fired stove.  Then father, mother, me, Cat, Reuben, Samantha, and then Levi.”

Joseph quipped, “And thus the expression of don’t throw the baby out with the bath water.  They are always the last when the water is the muddiest.”

Gwen asked, “Why did the bus take a week to get here?  I came by bus, and it only took about two days.”

Catherine said, “Ma’am, we had to go to two towns over before we were on the bus route.  The merchant ran the produce into town to sell it and he was late coming back to pick us up.  A teacher at our high school lived in the bigger town where the bus route was.  Since we were late, she had left for the day.  The custodian saw us crying, and he let us into the school.  We slept in the teacher’s lounge.  We made a bed out of the sofa and chairs for Reuben and Samantha.  But then, we had to wait through the next day until our teacher was ready to go home.  It was the first time we had ever ridden in an automobile.  We stayed the second night with her and her family.  They even had a crib for Levi.  They fed us supper, our last meal until just now.  Then we went to the bus stop with our tickets in hand and something was wrong.  They said we would have to wait until the next day.  They never explained.  Maybe the bus that came through did not go the direction we needed to go.  We did not wish to burden our teacher, so we slept on the floor in the gas station where the bus would stop.  Then the bus had some problems.  The bus was supposed to get here in 43 hours according to the schedule, but we stopped next to the highway for several hours awaiting someone to fix the bus.  So, night four, five, and six were all on the bus.  We arrived late in Tracy.  The bus gave us a hotel room to stay for the night, the seventh night of our journey.  By then, we had no more food.  At least we had water.  We bathed the children the best we could, but no food.  We have no money.  They kept asking for a credit card, but we know of no one who has one of those.  We did the best we could.  We thought we were coming to a place where there was enough money so that we could all have food, but then nothing.”

Joseph asked, “You said that the ‘Show Me’ house had indoor plumbing, at least a toilet.  What is the ‘Show Me’ house?”

Tom sighed, tears began to form.  “It is the house of our undoing, but the house where we were wed.  In the valley, the preacher told us what the rules were.  Anything related to sex was sin.  Married couples could only have sex for reproduction.  We were not allowed any public displays of affection.  That was sin.  Saying any word related to male or female body parts was sin.  We did not know what the things on our own bodies were.  And asking what they were was a sin.  So, the preacher set up the ‘Show Me’ house.  There is a saying, ‘I will show you mine, if you show me yours.’  Children about the age of seven or eight were paired off and stripped naked and placed in the house for three hours to see what the differences in boys and girls were.  They were innocent.  The stain of sin would not be on them.  No parent to explain.  The parents knew what things did, or they would not have children, but they had no idea what you called them.  The children invented their own names.  But Catherine and I were neglected.  We were never sent to the ‘Show Me’ house as a child.  That is what verwaarloosd means, neglected.  I had just turned fifteen and Catherine’s fifteenth birthday was approaching.  In the valley, this was the prime age for couples to marry.  I thought I was sick.  My ‘peeing thing’ as I called it, would get stiff in the morning.  I asked my mother if I was sick, and she refused to answer.  To her, I had just sinned and if she answered the question then she would have sinned and having my peeing thing get stiff was a sin, even though to me at that time, it was just a peeing thing.  She told a church elder that I had sinned.  At the same time, Catherine asked her mother how women became ‘with child.’  Her father was an elder.  It was noted that we had not been to the ‘Show Me’ house.  We were twice the age of those who had just gone to the house, and we had started developing.  We were in puberty, as we learned in high school.  But the church decided that we would both be stripped and placed in the ‘Show Me’ house for three days, not like the three hours the little children had for gender discovery.”

Catherine took over.  “I was stripped naked and placed in the house, a small house, one bedroom and an attached bathroom.  The only indoor plumbing in the valley, except for the preacher’s house.  We lived in the valley of the windmills.  No electricity, but everyone had a windmill and a well with a tank for water.  This house had an elevated tank to supply water through a pipe to the sink and the toilet.  And the toilet had a septic tank.  Only the preacher had such things.  I knew a boy was about to come in who would look at me.  I went to the bathroom and locked the door before Thomas entered.

Thomas then took up the narrative, “I came in, also stripped naked.  When I saw the door, I tried to open it.  Catherine said to not enter.  I told her that I was not trying to take advantage of her.  I just wanted to escape.  The house had one window, but it was boarded up.  Catherine refused to come out and I complained that I might need to go to the bathroom, and the sink was the only supply of fresh water, after all – three days.  She still refused, but as we talked through the closed door, we each admitted that we liked each other.  We were just so shy and so scared.  I did not want to be beaten because I told her that I liked her.  Besides, she was so beautiful, I thought an older boy would take her away.  She said older boys had asked her to be their bride, but she had refused.  There was no courting.  That was sin.  The boy saw what he wanted, and he asked the girl to marry, or the parents set it up.  Then about age fifteen, the boy’s parents built a house for the son, and he got his bride.  They went into the house, and they were married.  But I am the youngest of ten children and my father did not have a lot of land.  All he had left was the farmhouse.  There was no place for me to build a house for my bride.  Catherine is the youngest of twelve, but women inherit nothing in the valley.  There was nothing for her to inherit.  Again, we were both neglected.  So, she sat at the far end of the back pew in school.  I sat at the far end of the pew opposite her.  We learned from our teachers.  We made excellent grades, but we only caught passing glances of each other.  We both desired to know each other.  We were too afraid.  But after a few hours of discovering how much we really loved each other, the door opened to the bathroom.”

Catherine said, “And Thomas said, ‘You are more lovely than I could have ever imagined.’  I laughed.  Neither of us had any idea what the opposite sex looked like naked.  How could Thomas imagine it?  But then his peeing thing started to twitch.  He said that had never happened before.  We got scared.  He already thought he was sick.  But no one was outside the door of the house to monitor us.  We did one thing after another.  We did as the little children did, we explored each others bodies and without knowing what we were doing, we loved each other.  Through the bathroom door, we had already said there was no one else in our lives and there never would be.  We saw a tattered Bible next to the bed and we started reading it.  We read where Rebekah went into the tent with Isaac and they were married.  We looked at each other.  We embraced, and we declared that we must be now married ourselves.  So, we continued to read the Bible and we learned of a Jesus that the preacher never preached about.  We learned that God was love.  We never heard that in the valley.  Love was too close to saying sex and we were not allowed.  So, for three days we were intimate with each other half the time and we read the Bible the other half, with very little sleeping.”

Thomas picked up the story.  “Then when they opened the door, Catherine’s father wrapped a bed sheet around her and ordered her to come with him.  Catherine said that we were now wed, and she would go home with her husband.  The church elder left in a rage.  He has never spoken to either of us since.  Catherine, by saying that, admitted that we had sinned, and she sinned by standing up to her father.  My father came in, and he accepted us into the home I had grown up in.  It was just a week later that Catherine and I learned that we were both selected to go to high school.  Some years, the valley has no one eligible for high school.  Other years, it is only one.  The ones going to high school would return to run the school or be the people who fixed the windmills.  Both of us going to high school was a first, just like the college scholarship was the first.”

Gwen asked, “But you said that you were married in every way possible.  How does this count for the laws that govern you as a citizen of the state and the country?”

Catherine smiled, “Just as people marry in the valley by entering the home together, when children are born, a mid-wife registers the birth with the church.  But that is as far as that goes.  When someone from the valley goes to high school or a trade school in the small town, we are told that we need a birth certificate, but we have none.  We went to a clerk.  We gave the clerk all the information.  The clerk went to the courthouse at the county seat and returned with our certified birth certificates.  The information we gave them was that I was Catherine air Dearmad.  As verwaarloosd is neglected in Dutch, air Dearmad is neglected in Scottish Gaelic.  Our valley of windmills speaks both languages a little.  Our last names could not be the same and then look believable on a marriage license.  But then, with birth certificates, we paid the clerk for a marriage license.  With that in hand, we went to a church in the small town with our favorite teacher, the one who drove us to the bus stop.  The pastor got another witness, and we went through the vows.  If anyone asks, we have all the necessary paperwork.  We even have social security numbers.”

Joseph spoke, “But as to why the scholarship is there one minute and gone the next, they wanted to rid the valley of those that did not follow the rules, the rules that the preacher established.  I am afraid that the preacher, as you call him, feared that you knew too much, even though you were simply naïve and innocent.  Did you have any confrontation with the preacher?”

Thomas said that they did not, but Catherine looked frightened.

I asked, “Cat, if I can call you that, what happened between you and the preacher?”

Cat said, “The preacher lived in the valley, but one late afternoon, it was already getting dark.  I was delayed at school.  We needed to do book reports.  I went to the library and got Jane Eyre for me and The Count of Monte Cristo for Thomas, while Thomas ran ahead to keep the merchant from going home without us.  The merchant had done so before and we had to sleep in the doorframes of the school.  I thought I saw something in a house that we always passed on the way to where the wagon would take us back to the valley.  It was dark and the lights were on in the house.  I stopped because I could not believe what I saw in the window.  The preacher was having sex with a young girl, maybe twelve or thirteen.  I was in the dark street.  I doubt if he ever saw me, but each time I saw him after that, I could not look at him with reverence.”

Joseph nodded, “Yes, when the leader shows his feet of clay, it is hard for those who know to ever see him in a positive light.”

Cat started to cry, “But I tried to forgive him.  I tried to look at him with reverence, but if he saw that I distrusted him, he might have distrusted me.”

Sophie spoke up, “So, now we finally have something that can put the preacher in prison.  The local authorities can put a tail on the preacher and see if he leaves the curtains drawn again.”

Naomi said, “And you are doing nothing about it, Sophie.  If your Dad gets the run around from the locals, it may mean that money has exchanged hands and no one can be trusted.  You will not investigate at all, but maybe Poached can figure out what happened to the money.  He is good at following financial transactions.  Probably this entire thing was a ruse to get Tom and Cat out of the valley.  But no noble crusades from you, Sophia.  They would bury you in a shallow grave in a heartbeat.”

Then Naomi turned to Catherine, “Catherine, if you want to go to college, we can work something out.  As a department head at the university, I have some influence, and Pink Lady has given them millions of dollars.  We might substitute the missing money with funds of our own.  Your children will be safe here while you attend school, and I am sure Pink Lady can find jobs for both of you.”

I said, “We always have jobs for people.  If you have worked as farmers, I need pickers, that is if you are not afraid of heights.”

Tom said, “But other than fruit trees, you are on the ground when you pick vegetables.”

I laughed, “Thanks to Zuzka over there, we grow things a little differently.  We will give you the tour tomorrow.  We want you rested before we do that.  In your present condition, you might get dizzy and fall.  That would be disastrous.”

As we were talking about various other things, including what Tom thought he might have as a major in college, there was a knock at the door.  One of the security people entered with Maeve Yeggs.  Maeve was young enough to be my daughter, near the age of Boaz, but she had married my father-in-law.

I brightened, “Hello, Mom, you rarely leave the mission.  We were just welcoming Tom and Cat.  They will stay with Jochebed until their apartment is ready.  Did our new guests leave something at the mission?”

Maeve shook her head and at once, I knew this was not a social call.

Maeve said, “Pink, I married your father-in-law, and I know you like the joke of calling me, Mom, but you make me feel old.  Okay, having twins keeps me tired also.  Thomas, Dot Com was busy.  She asked me to come by.  I was at your meeting with her this morning.  I am the counselor there, thus, rarely leaving the building.  I have a message for you.  It is bad news.  Someone named Andrew Bakker sent a message through a teacher that you knew.”  Thomas looked worried.  He said that Andrew was his eldest brother.  Thomas might be a baker.  Maeve continued, “All that the teacher knew was that you would be going to the school and someone from the school called us, since the bursar sent you to the mission.  Thomas, your parents’ home burned to the ground.  Your parents were trapped inside.  They passed away.  Andrew says that there is no reason to ever return to the valley of the windmills.  I am so sorry.”

Thomas broke down.  But Catherine said something I did not expect.  “Tom, the elders killed them.  If we returned, they would find a way for us to die also.”  Then, they embraced each other.  Thomas replied, “Yes, Cat, we broke the rules, and my parents broke the rules by loving us instead of shunning us.”  They mourned, and the team that had gathered each came by to place their hands on the couple, pray for them, and offer their sympathy.

Gwen and Joseph approached me.  They seemed to be finishing each other’s sentences.  They would check on the ver Waarloosd family daily.  Gwen was not from a valley, but, when she disobeyed a gypsy rule, the gypsies sold her to a valley farmer.  She understood the legalism of valley life.  Joseph, as a chaplain for a disaster relief organization, had dealt with many of the same problems, in valleys and in other places, any closed society where one man could rule the people with rules that controlled the people to the leader’s advantage.

Credits

The Williams are Blake and Penny Williams.  Blake Williams is named for an influential poet and artist of the late 1700s and early 1800s.  Penny Williams is a play on the founder of the Pennsylvania colony, William Penn.  Why can’t two homeless people have some dignity?

This story is pure fiction, but there are elements of the truth.  I have written about how the town I grew up in was partially in the 20th century, but with values that might be closer to the 19th century or even earlier.  The modern ideas of not spanking the child had never made it there.  I think my old hometown is considerably different these days, but I am sure that in the privacy of some homes, there are elements of the old ways.

And you do not have to be in a confined space to start a cult of this type.  Jim Jones started the Peoples Temple in Indianapolis, Indiana.  He moved to California and the main church was in San Francisco.  While many California Governors and influential politicians visited the temple, mostly for large dinners, some dealings with the cult were producing pushback.  Jim Jones, with connections with the USSR, then moved the temple to Guyana as an “agricultural project,” and he called it Jonestown.  When USA Federal officials investigated complaints of Peoples Temple people being held against their will, the massacre started, with most of the population being fed a drink with cyanide, even the children.  Only a hand full survived.

My mother had an aversion to anything related to romance and sex.  There would never be any discussion of love, love making, or the body parts associated with that.  All of that was sin, as well as public displays of affection (PDA).  And PDA extended to the privacy of the den, between married partners, just because she could see what we, or my sister and her husband, were doing.  That was sin also.  Maybe that is why I asked questions about what I should already have known when I was sixteen.  And me thinking I was sick when normal things that happen during puberty occurred…  That was the highest form of sin.  I was naïve and a very late bloomer.

My mother even extended this aversion to the word “love.”  I have characterized myself as being a good little boy, but I was impish in that I would tell her, “I love you, Mom.”  It was about a month into this challenge before she responded that she loved me too, but you could see the pain in her eyes when she said it.  My Dad on the other hand had no problem in my preteen and early teen years of checking that I was tucked in, which I did by myself, and then saying, “Good night, son, I love you.”  My mother never ever proffered the “I love you”, only as a response to me saying it.  And saying, “I love you, God” was considered a sin.  It was too “casual.”

And I have written a few times about my paternal grandfather who would not allow dice or cards of any type in his home.  Using those things meant gambling and gambling was a sin.  All these things were forms of legalism, when we should focus on God’s Grace.

And I will still have the remnants of legalism that will haunt me until the day I die.  I know God loved me while I was a sinner.  I know He has forgiven me all my sins.  My desire is to live a blameless life, but those moments of judging others, even for a moment, or feeling guilty over this or that stem from my upbringing.  It will be a long road for Tomcat.  They will see others do what they were told was a sin, and their minds will react as they did as a child, but sanctification is a slow process.