VBS, Day 3

Now Playing: "Harvest Storm" by Altan. Track 3, "King of the Pipers".

July 12, 2006

At nine-thirty, Laura, Stephen, and I drove to VBS. As always, the kids had organized another big game of duck-duck-goose to play while people arrived. As kids came, they joined in. Today small Emily C came with her siblings. She’s been sick with a fever these past days, but today she participated with delight in all the activities. She sat and beamed at us during the game, clueless as to what she was supposed to do. So when it was her turn, I took her by her little brown hand and led her around the circle, patting each child on the head. Logan stooped down so she could reach the top of his head. She caught on fast, and I took some funny pictures of Emily sitting beside Bridget, both sisters laughing uproariously. When opening exercises started at 10:00, I went upstairs and sat with Anna. Beth led the singing, her usual peppy self. She taught the kids the “banana clap” as a treat for doing so well. The “banana clap” is a ridiculous little set of handmotions which make it look as though you’re peeling and eating a banana by squishing it up out of the peel and catching it in your mouth as it flies through the air.

Today I visited all three stations during VBS. First, I sat with Katie at the Bible story station. Logan taught the story today. While I was at the Bible story station, the Amish Flintstones (the boys’ group) was there. He talked to them about building on Christ as the firm foundation, and about how believers are living stones being built up into the church. He had the boys pile on top of each other to build a “living building”. The boys loved it—especially since David, Clay, Stephen, and J.D. lay on the bottom, so the boys got to squish their leaders.

Next I went to the memory verse station, which is led by Anna and Rachel. The littlest group, the Pebbles, were at the station while I was visiting. “Who are we?” asked Ruth, their leader. “The Pebbles!” the little girls shouted back. “What do we do?” she asked. “Get in people’s shoes!” they returned, which has a double meaning when applied to these small creatures. They participated in the memory verse with some help: Mary seemed more inclined to talk about her dogs and cats than to make the hand motions that fitted with the verse. After being at the memory verse, I went out to help the girls with their craft. Today they’re putting verses into their fan-shaped books. I cut and glued for kids who were lagging behind.

When all three groups had rotated through all three stations, from 10:30 to 11:30, it was time for snacks and games. The oldest two groups went outside, but the little ones stayed indoors for their snacks. Mary and Christa were being fractious, so I sat down beside them and told them another outlandish story about aliens. Christa and Mary demanded that it be about “bad little aliens and one good little alien and Christa and Mary”. (At the mention of the “good little alien”, Christa batted her eyelashes.) Christa giggled evilly whenever the “bad little aliens” were mentioned in the story. When the kids finished their snack, I turned them over to Ruth and Hannah. Ruth and Hannah marched the little ones outside for games, passing the troop of older kids as they marched inside for snacks. Beth and I passed out water and trail mix to the older kids. After all the kids had been marched upstairs for closing exercises, Katie and I swept up. The harsh broom bristles slithered over the linoleum floor. When the kids came back downstairs after closing exercises, I passed out books and bags of trail mix.

Then the helpers settled down around the table for lunch. There was the usual dose of silliness: teasing Anna and Ruth about drinking blue bug’s blood (they were drinking Gatorade), stealing J.D.’s hat, and Anna and Ruth singing songs about viruses, phylum, floem, algae, and fungi to the tunes of “Yankee Doodle”, “Oh, Susannah!”, “My Darling Clementine”, and the “Battle Hymn of the Republic”. Laura went home right after VBS today to bake cookies for crafts/snacks tomorrow and to help my mother with supper for tonight, so Katie joined me for the traditional after-lunch game of Scattergories.

At one-thirty, Mr. P came back with the clipboards, flyers, and brochures. We prayed, then went out for door-to-door. We drove over to the Will Rogers Elementary School neighborhood, to the north of OSU. Mr. P didn’t go out with us, and Laura was missing, so we had a team of three: Logan, Ruth, and me. The three of us went with David, Clay, and Brad into the east part of the neighborhood. Many of the houses in this area have been bought by OSU and are slated for demolition in preparation for OSU’s new “sports park”. It was sad to see some of the older houses with their shutters torn off, their porches aslant, and their wooden siding rotting away. Logan, Ruth, and I knocked on many empty doors. We had perhaps half-a-dozen people in the two-and-a-half hours we were out.

The afternoon crawled away slowly. A cicada buzzed and thudded on the concrete in its death throes. Cottonwood fluff, feeling some current of air, floated like falling stars in the deep shadow of the trees along a creek. On the still air, I could hear phones ringing, dogs barking, a door slamming. Across McElroy Street, closer to the university, demolition had already begun on an apartment complex. A huge backhoe cranked over the heap of boards and bricks. I heard wood crack and glass shatter as its trap-like bucket shoveled through the pile. Logan walked quickly down the street, but Ruth lagged behind as we returned to the cars. Logan threatened that if she didn’t hurry up, he’d ring the doorbell when it was her turn and make her run to the door. She said she had a headache. At three-thirty, we drove back to the church office, and more people shared their testimonies. Katie gave a candid, strong testimony. Anna gave an intense testimony. Mr. P dismissed us at four-thirty. Anna and Ruth came home with Stephen and me to spend another night.

At home, we found my mother wrapping up preparations for supper. The tables had been pushed together in the dining room and set with places for twelve. The smells of curry, rice, and blueberry muffins trailed through the house from the kitchen. Since most of the work had already been done, we settled down in front of the DVD player and watched a little bit of "The Chronicles of Narnia". Just as we reached the part in the battle where the Narnians are in full gallop toward the Witch’s host, their spear-points lowered, pennants flying, Brad rang the doorbell. We howled with mock disappointment. Brad and Logan were the only ones to arrive: Clay, David, and Nathaniel had borrowed Logan’s car and were coming later. When the rest of the mission team arrived, it was suppertime. We all sat around the long table in the dining room and ate a sumptuous meal. During the meal, my mother quizzed Brad about his training and work as a firefighter in Idaho. As soon as supper was over, I changed into my swimsuit. Everyone else sat downstairs and watched a “Three Stooges” short, “You Nazti Spy”. Then Laura, Anna, Nathaniel, and I drove to the Carrolls’ house to pick up Katie, who was going to join us for the usual CY swimming night.

At the pool, we found the Ps waiting. The Ys and the Ss with Dani joined us. This was the first time I’d been in the water all summer, and I delighted in it: leaping in with a splash, swimming from one end of the pool to the other, diving, turning cartwheels, spinning, shooting underwater on my back, gliding along the bottom. Light feathered my arms with rippling pinions, and I flew through the water.

Laura and I went down the slide together. A little black girl with two frizzy ponytails was standing in line in front of us. She turned around, squinted up, and chirped, “You two look like twins.” Laura and I looked at each other and laughed. Whizzing down the slide into the deep end, the water was cold against my legs. A satisfying splash ended the ride. Logan was going down also, and he made several large splashes. Back in the big pool, the boys had found a nerf ball and were tossing it around. One boy would take the ball and stand back four or five yards from the rest of the boys, who would cluster together. The single boy would toss it at the other boys, who would all try to grab it. While I watched, other kids in the pool started to play. A trio of ditzy girls stood between the single boy and the rest of the boys, giggling and trying to snatch the ball. A couple of black boys joined in.

After awhile, when Nathaniel asked me for my car keys to get something out of the car, I scrambled out of the pool to oblige. Instead of getting back into the water, I sat on the side of the pool and watched the activities. Evening was coming down. Instead of sunlight lacing the pool floor, the water opaquely reflected the sunset. Smooth waves like marbles rolled the sky between them: black, turquoise, peach, aquamarine. The mural of the Japanese wave in front of Mount Fuji on the half-moon back of the nearest building began to fade into twilight. I watched the kids playing in the pool. Right beside me, Joseph clung to the metal gutter running along the side of the pool. Stephanie held him gently around his waist. He quacked and splashed cheerfully, grinning up at me. Mr. Y came up with Raychel, and the four of them made a pretty family group together, the two little ones dabbling happily in their parents’ arms. In the middle of the pool, Will had confiscated one of the long foam noodles. He squinted down it as though it were a telescope, then blew down it and squirted water out, then smacked it down in the middle of a group of little girls. They started to splash him. Brad was being chased by a boy I didn’t know. His tanned arms slashed through the water. Stephanie and Joseph, strolling away through the pool, splashed Brad as he passed by. Brad grinned at Stephanie as she, with an innocent grin, pointed to Joseph as the culprit. Logan, J.D., Sam, and Stephen were engaged in a water fight. Logan grimaced and ducked in mock-superhero style as J.D. pretended to punch him. Anna, Laura, Ruth, and Hannah were chasing David and Clay around the pool. Clay had swiped one of their noodles, and they were trying to win it back. Clay shouted that the orcs were after him and called to “Frodo” (David) to help. I shook my head, with a little laugh, because David had apparently “stolen” “my” name. Mrs. S and my mother were in the water, standing by the side of the pool, talking and giggling like a pair of little girls—but giggling about their children. Mrs. Spitler’s hand slipped on the metal gutter, and she flipped upwards. She and my mother collapsed into laughter. Katie was sitting next to me, hugging Joseph in her arms. He was shivering, blue with cold, but he still smiled and chuckled happily as she cooed at him.

I sat, remembering it all: Watching the light glancing up off the water onto their faces, watching the stars start to gleam out like silver leaves flashing in the sky. Chlorine-stiff hair, cool skin, water splashing my toes, rough concrete under my haunches. “It couldn’t be anymore beautiful….”

Eventually, I did get back into the water, and joined in with Anna, Hannah, and Ruth, who were being teased mercilessly by Clay and David. But then my mother, who’d had to get out of the water because of a foot cramp, called out that it was time for us to go. So I clambered out of the pool, wrapped on a towel, and marched to the car. We had to squeeze into the car on the drive home: Laura, Ruth, Stephen, and Anna in the back seat, and Katie, my mother, and me in the front seat. Everyone bundled up in their damp towels. I rolled down the windows, and we whizzed through town blasting out Altan, “Harvest Storm” on the CD player. “Ah, this is the way to end the day. Listening to Altan with the windows open,” Anna sighed happily. Ruth, Stephen, and Laura were being very silly, tickling each other, giggling, and bouncing up and down in the back seat. They tried to get Laura to lie down across their laps so that no police officer would see the extra head poking over the seat, but Laura refused to stay down for long. We dropped Katie off at the Cs’ house, where she would spend the night, and drove home ourselves. Crickets chirped cheerfully, in tune with the fiddle, from blooming crepe myrtle bushes as we pulled into the driveway.