Day 26

Finally he spoke to my father, in a deadly serious tone that brooked no argument. “Sir, I know it’s been a hardship on your family to be missing their mother, the glue that holds the family together but the needs here were more pressing. You may not know this but your daughter very nearly lost her life having your grandchildren. I’d think you’d have been glad that your wife was here to help out and to spend time with her daughter. Both of you will always be welcome in our home, but we do demand you treat our choices with the same respect we treated yours in your home.”

Daddy looked momentarily alarmed, looking from Jude to me and said, “Kitten, is that true?” I nodded yes, confirming Jude’s words. He sat down suddenly, like a man with the wind knocked from him and he grasped my hands while saying to Momma, “You never told me that.”

She hugged his shoulders and whispered, “I didn’t want to worry you, honey. I knew it was hard enough being apart all this time. I decided not to say anything unless, you know, the worst happened.. thankfully God was merciful and everything is alright now.”

While Daddy held my hands and said, “I’m so sorry. I just charged in here like an old fool because I was missing your mother so much. I never thought to consider what it’s been like here.”

“Daddy stay,” I urged, “just for a few days, here with Momma.”

He agreed, nodding mutely. I could see behind him that this made Momma very happy, she clapped her hands in a girlish joy.

“Will you at least see Jake and Cynthia Rose while you’re here. No matter what type of choices in life they’ve made they are your children. The Bible teaches forgiveness so can you not put your feelings about their paths aside to see them? I know they’d like to see you again.” I urged gently, as funny as it felt to be lecturing my father on what the Bible said.

Still holding my hands I could see he was now weeping, realizing that I’d come close to death had a profound affect on my father. He still didn’t speak, he nodded yes again and sobbed openly.

My mother sprang into action, hugging him tightly.

I’d thought at first that having both of my parents here for the additional two weeks they stayed would be strained and difficult, but it wasn’t. I realized that the real reason he’d come after my mother was indeed that he missed her. They’d never been apart more than two days before and here she had been staying with me for over five months. I saw now what a sacrifice it was on their marriage.

In my ignorance I’d always assumed their marriage was based on duty and guilt, guilt over the baby they aborted in high school. But as I spent time with both of them, time as an adult with life experienced I couldn’t have hoped to possess as a kid, I realized that they both were deeply in love with each other, that there was still considerable sexual energy between them. My parents completed each other in a way I’d never realized before.

Watching them I wondered if nearly thirty years into our marriage would Jude and I have this sort of love still between us. I envied them that love and hoped we would have that type of white hot flame still burning between us as the years went on.

And so yet again I summoned both of my siblings, Jake from south Florida and Cynthia Rose from nearby Biloxi to my home for a meeting with one of our parents.

Cynthia glumly agreed and didn’t bother taking offense when I asked her to dress conservatively and act at least slightly repentant for living with Brad. “I’m not stupid,” she’d said in a dull voice, making me wonder exactly what she’d been up to since I last saw her. “Brad and I are engaged. I’ll wear my engagement ring and even drag Brad with me. He owes me big time right now.”

When I called Jake he said to my request, “You know, this is why I’m starting to dread your phone calls lately. It was awkward enough with Momma but gay bashing homophobic Daddy? Impossible!”

“Please, Jake?” I’d plead, “Do this for me if you cannot do it for yourself. Besides you haven’t seen your new nephews and niece yet.”

“Okay, okay, you win,” he’d agreed finally, “But I’m doing this for you and to see your babies, not for Daddy.” A note of wistfulness crept into his voice as he added, “I would like to see Momma again before she leaves.”

We spent the two weeks that Dad was with us as we had been spending most of our time, simply living day by day. I took long walks on the beach with Dad and he accompanied me when I took the babies out for an afternoon walk on the sidewalks through our community. All of us gathered for dinner nightly. My parents spent a lot of time with each other or together with the babies.

I even took my father with me a few times to the clinic I worked at so he could get a sense of what I did for a living, perhaps even understand that what I did was help others struggling with a variety of issues. I had to attend a few meetings so I’d be up to speed when I returned in a few weeks. One afternoon I came out of a short meeting on changes in regulations on insurances to find my father nearly in tears. “These poor people.” he whispered, much affected by sitting here among the depressed and chemically addicted, “They need Jesus so much.”

“Yes,” I simply agreed, “but since many of them are so unwilling to accept Him into their lives then they need other kinds of help. That’s where the other therapists I work with and myself come into play. We help them deal with the stuff of their lives, Daddy.”

He looked up at me with a new level of understanding and said, “This is your mission field, isn’t it?”

I smiled, he finally got it. “Yes it is.”

On the ride home from the mental health clinic Daddy was uncharacteristically silent, staring out of the window at the landscape of knobby loblolly pines and palmetto plants mixed with occasional home or business. He finally spoke when we were nearly home, “Emily, I’ve decided to sent Hope Maria to you to help out with your babies. That way you won’t need to hire some outsider you don’t know if you can trust. Hope has her heart set on going to ministry school and being ordained. One of the schools she’s got all picked out is in Waveland, the next town over. They offer night classes, so she can help out with the babies while you and Jude work and go to school at night.”

I sighed in relief, knowing that by the offer my father was showing his approval of Jude and I, our life, our small family, as well as solving my biggest ongoing problem. a nanny or au pair for the babies. So far I’d interviewed ten people and my inner sense was that none of them was really right for the job. But I felt I had to tease my father just a little too. “So,” I said, “does that mean you’re no longer opposed to women in the pulpit, Daddy?”

He sighed, a long sad exhalation and said, “This world is a changing too much for me but I can find no direct scripture forbidding it in the Bible. It wouldn’t be my first choice for Hope Maria but I’ve learned the hard way, through you, through Cynthia Rose and Jake, that I must give each of you the space and freedom to be who you are in the Lord.”

I hoped he meant that because the weekend before they would be leaving was upcoming and we were hosting a dinner to which Jake, Cynthia Rose and Brad were invited. Jake was no longer with his Captain but he complained that he would have liked to have brought a special someone to my home had he been seriously involved. It was the only thing I was ashamed about the invitation, I’d told him not to bring a lover or partner. I just knew that Daddy couldn’t have handled a meeting under such circumstances.

Not that I or Jude objected. Our church taught that while the Bible frowns on homosexuality it wasn’t our place to judge or discriminate, we were to treat others from different walks the same, with love, the love Christ showed each of us, with out reservation or discrimination.

The dinner turned out to be awkward, my father wasn’t as far along in his ability to forgive and forget as I thought he had been. He treated Jake almost like a leper, unable to look him in the eyes, wincing upon hearing that Jake had a career as a graphic artist with a newspaper in south Florida, like it wasn’t a manly enough pursuit. He kept asking Jake what had been wrong with working on the fishing boats, not understanding that Jake, like I, had decided to give it a try working with what was his passion.

At best by the end of the evening an uneasy truce had been affected. Jake had spent most of his time with us holding one or another of the babies.

But I wasn’t so worried about Jake as I was Cynthia Rose by the end of the evening. Cynthia and Brad had turned up an hour late and Cynthia looked to be on the verge of tears even if she looked every bit the respectable lady that Momma thought she was. She slurred her words as though she was on some sort of drug and I noticed a new welt on her upper arm when she rolled up her sleeves to help Momma and I wash the dishes after dinner.

This was the first time Jude or I had met Brad and neither of us cared much for him. Watching him suck up to first my mother and later, my father, made me sick to my stomach. When the triplets were brought out he cast an eye towards them almost like he was busy calculating the financial worth three healthy white infants could bring on the adoption black market. He gave me the creeps in the worst way.