Aprons

On my last day as minister at a little church in northern Arizona, I felt sadness and regret about leaving the people who served tea, arranged altar flowers, held my hands with a cool touch, made me laugh. The women.

I was a female cleric intent on proving herself as good as any male pastor, and as I found my way in that church setting I made assumptions at first about the women in their aprons. I viewed them as children to be cajoled and preached at. After all, I was standing in a pulpit where only men had gone before; God forbid I should be seen in an apron.

I wore my robes with pride and let myself envision new directions for the church. One Sunday morning, at the end of the service, I announced from the pulpit, “I’ve planned a spirituality retreat!” Our volunteer musician, Marjorie, played an emphatic chord on the organ as if I’d proclaimed the Second Coming of Christ. “We’ll share our thoughts and feelings in a cabin tucked in the Prescott mountains,” I added.

I hadn’t taken into consideration that the congregation was made up of people who’d gone to war, worked on farms or labored in tough jobs. Their idea of a fun retreat didn’t include two days in a cabin with their minister. Creeping into my consciousness, too, was the suspicion that I’d devised a project based on a slippery concept, spirituality, an abstraction I barely understood.

The next Sunday Ardith and Sarah, best friends, signed the list, and so did Millie and Curtis, a couple new to the church. My husband John chose to go too. Marjorie, our creative organist, said she wanted to find spiritual healing for an incurable golf swing and added her name. Not the response I’d hoped for, but enough to pay the fee at the camp.

Two weeks later, a van carrying nine retreatants left for our spirituality retreat. No sign of aprons. Instead, we wore sweatshirts and bluejeans — except for Marjorie, a thin blond in shorts. As we headed out Copper Basin Road, a pickup sped past, a shotgun visible in the back window and a German Shepherd pacing in the truck bed. Marjorie muttered, “Made out your wills?”

After settling into our spacious cabin, I gave everyone a blue notebook and asked them to write about the question, What gives you courage? We continued through the afternoon, reading our notes aloud and eating snacks. We talked of neighborhoods we’d lived in, people we’d admired, our love for Arizona.

“Look at those balloons!” Marjorie said suddenly, pointing at the window. We followed her outdoors to get a better view of three hot-air balloons over the tops of the pines. I gazed at the joyful sight and felt wistful, aware I’d not moved our conversation to spiritual depths. Then an eerie sound startled me, a birdcall. “That’s the daddy quail,” Marjorie said, “trying to attract predators away from the nest. He’s saying, ‘No one is home. No one is home.’” It was oddly comforting.

The next morning, I asked the group to tell stories about their religious backgrounds.  My husband spoke of his childhood as a minister’s son and the hypocrisies he’d seen in churches. Curtis confessed to enforced Bible readings he endured as a youngster.

“Sounds tough,” Marjorie said. “We had to read the Bible aloud at home every night, but I remember it as funny, especially when my sister said ‘Jesus spit.’”

Six weeks later, I stand in the back of the church taking a moment to marshal the strength I’ll need before the memorial service begins. Someone has put fall leaves and a drawing of a quail on the altar. Beams of light, shining through the faceted glass in the high windows, don’t lighten the somber mood. Murmurs of women — perhaps wearing aprons — come from the kitchen, where they prepare sweet food for a reception. I don’t remember music.

Marjorie isn’t with us. She’d caught a chest cold while registering junior-high students before the opening of school. Within days, she’d collapsed with pneumonia and died. We’re here in church to remember her with our words and prayers.

After the service, I join family at Marjorie’s home, where her husband sits looking outside at the quail, who seem to say No one is home. No one. The smell of blooming honeysuckle, Marjorie’s lure to butterflies, drifts in through an open window.

What gives me courage? Memories of the laughter and music of a blond organist in shorts.