Chapter 43: Why Would I Change A Thing?

Saturday, December 22, 1984

Today was, pretty much, a quiet day for all of us. Angie and Paige went off to have lunch with the Seilers (including Ted and Monique, who were in town for the holidays). I was pretty sure they were going out, though I didn’t know where.

Jas and I did the same with Camille and Francis. Camille cooked, and her cooking was (as always) wonderful, even for a relatively simple meal. Not that Mom’s wasn’t. I could criticize first-life Mom’s cooking, but this one? She’d come a long way.

We hung out and talked for a while, then went back to Mom and Dad’s, where the six of us had dinner (and, of course, talked still more).

Tomorrow was the big get-together for ‘Annie’, which should be a lot of fun.

Sunday, December 23, 1984

We headed to church today for what would be the first of three days in a row. I suppose it was somewhat fitting. We hadn’t been to church in months, and now we could ‘catch up’ a bit.

Mom actually had proposed skipping it last night, but we all vetoed that. We could stand an extra service or two. Paige and Jas were joining us this morning, but not tomorrow night nor Christmas morning. That seemed like a reasonable compromise.

I suspected that would change once we were married — both of us would go to one service or the other. That is, if we were in Houston for Christmas at all. That was an unknown, of course.

Pretty much everyone wanted to talk to us (meaning Angie and me). Jas and Paige weren’t left out, but people who I could barely remember wanted to shake my hand and hug Angie (or shake her hand and hug me) and ask how we were doing. These were adults, for the most part, and I couldn’t keep them straight. I’d never been able to do that in either life.

The teenagers were even worse. I’d been to confirmation class with many of them years ago, but those years were lost in a fog one-third caused by my iffy recollections of things the ‘Steve Marshall’ who inhabited this body before me had done, one-third by ‘my’ having attended confirmation class over forty years ago, and one-third thanks to all of the people I’d met since then.

The upshot was pretty much the same. None of them had steady romantic partners in the way we did. A few had somewhat long-term boyfriends or girlfriends, but the difference in seriousness was obvious.

And, of course, none of them were in same-sex relationships, which made Angie and Paige completely stand out. I’m pretty sure they made quite a few people distinctly uncomfortable, but Dr. Ott had been clear he didn’t have a problem with them attending church and participating (Angie as a congregant, Paige as a guest). If Dr. Ott didn’t have an issue, how could they?

Even at ‘our’ church, we were, to some extent, ‘celebrities.’ It was an odd feeling, and one I was surprised to find myself relatively comfortable with. All the practice had paid off, I suppose.

Dr. Ott’s sermon had nothing to do with us, thankfully. That would have been too much! It had nothing to do with Straight Slate, or gays, or anything else.

Instead, he gave what I thought was a very interesting take on how Mary must have felt as she traveled with the birth imminent. Yes, her husband was along, but would he help if she suddenly found herself giving birth? Could he have, if he wanted to? Where could she stay? Would she be able to recover? Would the baby be healthy, and how could she care for a newborn while traveling?

Dr. Ott’s take on it was that surely God was watching over her, and she would have known He was. Yet, of course, she was taking a lot ‘on faith.’ She couldn’t know what her baby was to become, nor what he would mean to literally billions of people throughout history. She couldn’t even know about the wise men, or the shepherds, or the angels and their glad tidings of great joy. All those were yet to come.

It was an interesting angle on things. We all knew the Christmas story, and we literally knew it ‘backward and forward.’ We knew what was going to happen. Virtually no one is told ‘the Christmas story’ before they’re told who Christ was, after all.

This was a unique sermon for me. I was certain I’d never heard it in my first life. I surely would have remembered it. Yet surely I must have been here, in this church, on this date, in my first life. I would have been home and I would never have skipped church.

Except ... perhaps I had. Perhaps Mom had made the same offer and Dad and I had taken her up on it. We would be here tomorrow for the nighttime service and here again on Christmas Day for the morning service. After we’d opened a present or two, of course!

This time, things were different. I was different, and Angie hadn’t been in the picture at all. Nor had Jas and Paige. Had they been opposed to going to church today, we might not have been here at all.

If someone asked me right after I ‘came back’ if I was looking forward to going to church again here, I would have said a qualified ‘no.’ There was a nostalgia factor, but I was definitely not a ‘true believer,’ and I knew the theology would grate on me. Oh, I knew I could put up with it, but I certainly didn’t relish the thought of all of those Sundays here.

Yet, now, it all meant something. It didn’t mean my religious views had changed, but I had a very different relationship with Dr. Ott and with the church in general. I wouldn’t have missed these past few years going here for the world, and I would make a point of visiting whenever I was free to do so on a Sunday morning in Houston.

That is, until Dr. Ott retired. After that, I might not see the value in coming here. His first replacement (who would likely become a junior minister here sometime in the near future, I suspected) wasn’t bad, but he had never meant to me what Dr. Ott had meant. It wouldn’t be compelling in the same way.

We greeted still more people after the service ended. I spoke briefly with Dr. Ott as well. I had just enough time to tell him things were going well, ask after his health, wish him well (and be wished well), and so forth. The time after a service wasn’t enough for a deep and meaningful conversation.

He greeted both Angie and Paige with warm handshakes and a light one-armed hug. It was the same hug he gave nearly all of the women who attended, and it made it clear he wasn’t going to be a party to their feeling anything but welcome.

Jas got the same hug, of course. If she were to have been unwelcome, it would have been for a different reason. She was, after all, not a Missouri Synod Lutheran at all (nor was Paige, but Jas had been more clear about that). If anything, she was nominally Catholic, since she did attend services with Camille and Francis every once in a blue moon. She would be at mass tomorrow night, in fact.

But, then, Martin Luther himself was a Catholic, and he had never meant to leave the church. He felt the Catholic church had let him down, so he was carrying on the true faith. The relationship between the two faiths had always been complicated.

In any case, we were welcome. That was what mattered.

We finally got away thanks to Dad protesting we had to be somewhere and simply couldn’t stay, but we would be back tomorrow. That was true, though not all of us would be back.

We arrived at the Warwick in time for our reservation, which was one of many made for the grand ‘Annie’ outing. The Nguyens and Seilers were already here and were chatting with each other.

In the ‘old friends’ category, Gene and Sue were here, as were Amit and Sheila. We all spent some time talking with them. Both couples were doing well, and they had almost straight A’s. Each of them except for Sue had one B. Sue was playfully lording that over the rest of them. None of them was dumb enough to say Wellesley was an ‘easy school,’ thankfully.

We’d invited the Mayrinks to lunch as well, and they’d come out, so I spent some time catching up with them. Dave had successfully navigated moving to Austin and starting classes at Texas without messing things up with Carolyn. Here they were, holding hands and looking increasingly like a couple who might go the distance. It looked good on him. He seemed more mature today than I think I’d ever seen him in my first life, even after he’d married and bought a house and started a business.

Dave asked about our winter break plans and Jas and I explained our ski trip. Cindy told us we had to remember our bathing suits. She’d once made the mistake of not having one and spent much of an evening staring longingly at the hot tubs. The next day, Lewis had bought her an overpriced suit so she could soak away some of the soreness. This was apparently before Dave and Ben had been born. They complained about never having gone skiing themselves.

After a bit, we moved on and said hello to Penelope and David. I was glad they’d joined us (and, of course, so was everyone else). ‘Annie’ was, after all, good, wholesome entertainment, perfectly family-friendly. They were happy to get to do something like this with Cammie.

We took up several large tables and mixed and mingled quite a bit. I’m not sure what the other diners thought of all this, but no one seemed upset.

After lunch, we all piled into our cars and headed to the show. Jas, in particular, was thrilled about our return to the Houston Music Hall. That ‘Brigadoon’ date had been a pivotal moment in our nascent relationship. It probably didn’t make or break anything, but it had been a very big deal.

When we got to the lobby, Steffie was there waiting. She had a few surprises for us, too. Not that she was here, nor that her husband was here, nor even that Meg was here.

The first surprise was circulating it amongst the Drama kids. In retrospect, it seemed silly that we hadn’t guessed she would, but she had.

The first sign of that was spotting Sam and Lexi Myers. Danny, Ben, Penny, Sierra, Marsha, and Breanna were also here, but I hadn’t been as close to any of them as I had to Sam and Lexi.

I’d left each of them a message, but they hadn’t called back. Presumably, it was to make this a surprise. It was definitely a surprise! Lexi was doing fine in college, thankfully, and Sam was having a great junior year. She had a boyfriend now, too, which made her off-limits.

Sierra and Sam both wanted updates about Jess. I said she was doing fine and would be in town soon. I think they guessed I knew more, but they didn’t ask, so I didn’t have to say anything that would have confirmed I knew a secret.

The second surprise was Meg bringing a boyfriend! Apparently, she’d started dating the guy not too long after Nationals. He’d been to one tournament thus far. That would have perhaps been a problem when my kids were in school, but it was fine by current standards.

His name was Henry, and he seemed like a decent enough guy. I was pretty sure Meg would accept nothing less.

He and I shook hands, and he said, “I’ve heard a lot about you!”

“I’ve heard nothing about you. Complete surprise on Meg’s part!”

He chuckled at that and nodded. We talked briefly, and it was ‘so far, so good.’ I trusted Meg’s judgment in any case.

As I was finishing checking in with the Memorial contingent, Marshall and Amelia arrived, along with Debbie and Alan Jenkins and a bunch of kids I figured must have been from Booker T. Washington’s Drama program.

Marshall and I spotted each other and headed towards each other, but Angie scooted right over and hugged Marshall, kissing him (on the cheek, this time).