Flooded with Memories

I recently returned to Grand Rapids, my hometown, to visit my family.

I love walking the streets of my childhood when I visit. I walk from my sister’s Heritage Hill house to the Eastown house I grew up in, on Sherman Street. It’s exactly the same as it was fifty-five years ago: a bulky Grand Rapids craftsman, like its neighbors. It’s even painted the same beige color.

I peek around to the back yard and see where my parents had made a sandbox out of a huge tractor tire — along with the climbing maple, my favorite part of the backyard. I look up to where my bedroom window was, and remember how bats would fly through my room on the way up to the attic while I was in bed, the covers pulled up over my head. Everyone I knew had bats in their houses in those days. I remember my dad chasing them through the house with a tennis racket to stun them before putting them outside. 

I remember the dinner parties my parents would have — the only time people used the formal living room. The Zwiers, Wolterstorffs, Smedes, Harpers, Mouws, and many others spent many a weekend evening there. I remember going upstairs at bedtime, but being drawn to what was happening downstairs by the peals of laughter emanating from the stairwell. I remember my brothers and I sneaking out of our rooms to sit at the stairway landing and spy on the adults, who were telling stories and laughing uproariously. 

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I keep on walking, now towards Calvin Church. Our family walked to Calvin Church every Sunday. Most of my memories of going to church are pleasant, if puzzling.

I loved the children’s choir director, Mr. Bouwsma, and singing “Humble Praises, Holy Jesus” from the balcony. I think of the Calvinettes leader who wore a lot of makeup and fancy clothes. I remember being puzzled, even as an eight-year-old, as she taught us the Calvinette motto, “Grace is deceitful and beauty is vain, but the woman who feareth the Lord, she shall be praised.” It was an unlikely principle to learn from a woman with false eyelashes, coiffed dyed hair, and a fur coat.

I think of all the men filing into the sanctuary in their black suits in lock-step and sitting in the front pews on Communion Sundays. This must be a really solemn occasion.Those men must be really important. 

We all loved Rev. Boomsma, our long-time minister, whose chins were many and whose voice was was low and gentle. I loved his children’s sermons, but my body would stiffen each Sunday as he read the Ten Commandments in decorous King James language. Had I broken that commandment? Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, or manservant, or maidservant, or anything that is thy neighbor’s. Had I done that? And his ox or his ass: isn’t that a bad word? Why does Rev. Boomsma say it? 

Being such consistent church attenders, my childhood self had to find things to do to take up the time it took Rev. Boomsma to preach and say his “long prayer”. I’d count the bricks from carpet to ceiling. I’d imagine giraffes living in the decorative wooden “cages” in the front corners of the church. I’d wonder where they lived Monday through Saturday, and who fed them.

Then there was the chilly late fall Saturday afternoon in the second grade. My friends and I were roaming the neighborhood, as usual, trying to figure out what to do next. Walking between our houses on Bemis, Dunham, and Sherman streets, we got an idea.

Let’s go to Calvin Church and see if we can get inside and explore when nobody is there! We walked the three blocks to the church and went around to the back door. There were a couple cars there, but nothing like on Sundays.

We tried the back door. It was open! We tiptoed in, and, hearing faint voices, quickly climbed the nearest staircase to the cavernous (to little girls) balcony. Whispering, we began to play “house”. One of us was the mother, and after eating our dinner she told us it was time for bed. We each climbed into a cushioned pew and pretended to go to sleep. The problem was, we soon actually were asleep.

We fell asleep in the balcony of Calvin Church!

After some time, we were awakened by the sound of hard shoes coming up the stairs. It was Mr. Mulder, the stern custodian! Flipping on the light, he was just as shocked as we were. But he was not playing. He ordered us to get up. He asked us what we thought we were doing. “Playing house,” I squeaked, barely audibly. “What do you think God thinks of you playing in his house? A church is not a place to play!”

With burning, red faces and averted eyes, we crept out of the pews, down the stairs, and into the cool of the afternoon. For years, I could not face Mr. Mulder. He lived across the alley from us, so I could not use the alley. I hoped he wouldn’t tell Rev. Boomsma. I was so ashamed that I never told my parents. And I never played in the house of the Lord again. 

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Until much later. Twenty years later, my own two daughters were born into the life of a preacher’s kid, I being the preacher. They will tell you to this day that a church is probably the best place to play. After church, when the adults were drinking coffee and talking, the kids would explore.

They explored the front of the sanctuary where they found those ancient ornate straight-backed chairs and played “Queen”. Sometimes they’d get into those little rooms off the front of the sanctuary and gawk at all the banners and worship paraphernalia. When they were feeling especially brave, they’d venture into the enormous, dark basement where the soup kitchen served lunch every Monday. They’d steer clear of the furnace room where it was rumored someone was living, deep in its bowels. Silently skirting its vicinity as to not awaken its sinister inhabitant, they’d see if they could find the secret passageway to the daycare center. And the balcony! It was so much fun to hide under the pews there during games of “Hide and Seek”.

The church was the best playground!  I would be wide-eyed each Sunday as my kids recounted the escapades that had carried them into the worlds of their imaginations during coffee hour in the church.

A lot can change in just thirty years. I, the little girl who had never seen or heard or imagined a woman preaching, grew up to be a preacher. Churches now have different attitudes towards children and often welcome their imaginations in church.

There is one thing that did not change. Way back then in Calvin church, I felt the love of all those grown-ups, even the stilted ones. I saw them smile at me, pat me on the back, and welcome me to church with a hand-shake. And each week, I gladly received the peppermint Mr. Kamp stealthily transferred from his palm into mine.