Sunday Service - 11 A.M.
So reads the sign in front of the
Ocracoke United Methodist Church.
As I am on a spiritual journey as well as an art pilgrimage, and as I need all of the influences I can get on the subject of spirituality, and as I am eager for social contact as well as inspiration, I go.
I am slightly apprehensive, knowing very little about the NC church-going experience. I wonder if my assumption that it is similar to ours is merely wishful thinking.
But it is lovely. Quite a large congregation (comparatively speaking), lady minister, (good speaker), lots of singing, (slightly different slant on the hymns, some of which I know), a few smiles and welcomes directed at me.
And children. It is almost always more interesting for me when there are children present. Some are sitting very quietly between parents. Some participate in the music. Others are running around outside.
I spend a fair bit of the service just taking it all in, especially the southern-style wooden church itself, which puts me in mind of another church on the other side of the world, and as this completely occupies my thoughts, I daydream.
I am four, and the youngest of four siblings. My ambitious parents take us from Toronto, Ontario to Auckland, New Zealand, where we live for sixteen months. We travel by ship - I am impressed enough by these events to carry them with me through life. But it is the sense of smell which is strongest, and this I can conjure up at any time. The ropey tar-like salty smell on deck, the mouth-watering smell of freshly baked dinner rolls in the dining room, the wafts of tropical flowers, frangipani, as we watch little islands pass in the south Pacific, the smell of paper and rubber and children in the playroom, the wood and linen and soap smell in the dim light of a sleepy cabin.
We arrive.
I begin school in Auckland, on my fifth birthday, cementing the place in my memory forever. I tie my own tie (school uniform), begin to read, learn to play 'knucklebones', and foster a lifelong love of hot-meat-pies. (Oh, and of course, lamb.)
As a family, we sail our little boat in the bay, swim, picnic, hike. We attend church in a small plain wooden building, where I gaze longingly at the bare feet of local children, (as we are forced into proper shoes). Our home has no phone or television, but with an enormous garden, quiet street and lots of children to play with, here we run barefoot. When I am told that we are moving back to Canada, I cry.
I am heartbroken. After all, sixteen months is a big chunk of life when you are five. (And no one gives me a straight answer about the likelihood of finding a hot-meat-pie stand in Canada).
My parents, for the rest of their lives, remember it as an amazing adventure, but I think of their hopes for a less materialistic life and equal society, and wonder if disappointment has a role. We settle easily back into Canadian life, and within a couple of years, our much loved baby brother is born.
What remains of that sixteen months? A tiny bright flicker within me.
I am back in the little wooden Ocracoke church.
'Shall We Gather at the River?' and it is over. I make my way home to Chester, past the reds and pinks of the azaleas, past the one and only Ocracoke School, ('Home of the Dolphins'), the playground, the outdoor basketball court, the coffee shop, all singing and ringing with the high birdlike chirp of children. I am welcomed by Chester, (as if I'd left him for a month), and we head for the sea, the beach, and more of childhood, on this soft and sunny and memory-laden day.
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