Chapter 37: Living in a Fishbowl

Part VI: Saul Gordon’s Story

SAUL:

“Grandma, Grandma, Grandma. Grandpa, Grandpa!” We’d heard the back door slam and footsteps rush into the family room. Brian Junior flew from one to another as he greeted Marilyn, Anna, and Evelyn, then Sly and me. “Hi, everybody!”

“My, you’ve grown so much!” I said.

“Grandpa, I haven’t grown any since Christmas,” he laughed. “I think this is it. I’m never going to be a basketball star like Dad.” At that, Brian Senior walked into the room with Hannah under one arm and Samantha under the other. Samantha immediately went to her father and gave him a hug and kiss on the cheek. Hannah seemed reluctant to let go of Brian but managed to quickly hug and kiss Evelyn and me. Both girls kissed Anna and Marilyn on the cheek and whispered soft greetings to the others in the room.

“It was stressful getting back,” Samantha explained. “Tyax is a beautiful place, but it took four trips in the float plane yesterday to get our crew and equipment off the mountain. We had to wait for the morning skim of ice to melt off the lake. Then there were hassles at the border when we drove down to Seattle. If it wasn’t for Betts giving us a place to stay last night, I think Hannah would have just kept driving all the way home instead of waiting for the plane this morning.”

“But it was great!” Junior broke in. “I’ve got to go tell Larry and Theresa about the riding up there. It’s way different than here. Some of the trails are so narrow and steep that you have to just close your eyes and hope the horse can pick his own way.”

“You didn’t!” Hannah exclaimed. Before she could get to Junior, Dani came into the room and wrapped her in a hug. I could see my daughter sigh and visibly relax in the embrace. Danielle and little Xan are still a calming influence on everyone they touch, even though Xan is often traveling these days.

“Hey, kiddo,” Brian said to his son, “Since you want to tell about the trip, why don’t you go ahead and find Carl. Larry won’t be back from the trail ride he’s on for a couple of hours. Carl is setting up the grills and could use the help. And there’s a horse in the pasture that’s been missing his rider for a month.”

“Yeah. I’ve gotta go see Frosty. See you guys all later!” he said. As quickly as he’d come into the room, he was gone. What an energetic young man!

Hannah was glued to Brian again, whispering in his ear. He nodded and they slipped out of the room. Hannah never let go of Dani’s hand and she followed them.

“Um ... I should go ... um ... help,” Samantha said. “We’ll get a chance to talk at the fire this afternoon. It’s just been ... a really stressful month. But the film’s in the can. We’ll get a few days off before we have to go into the studio and start viewing rushes. I made her promise.” Samantha left and hurried to join her cónyuge.

“She still suffers from it, doesn’t she?” Anna asked, turning to me. “She’s so competent and aggressive when it comes to directing a film that we forget the depression and anxiety are just below the surface.”

“It all came from living in the fishbowl,” I sighed. “And having a father who was a goldfish when she needed a shark.”

The standard routine back in that time was to assign a minister to a church and, unless there were some kind of extenuating circumstances, to leave him there for four years. It’s part of the connectional system. We had nine District Superintendents and a Bishop. That was the cabinet. My DS was responsible for reviewing ministerial performance and recommending appointment. The bishop usually rubber stamped the appointments the cabinet recommended.

The connectional system ran all the way up through the levels of the church. The DS was just another ordained minister serving an appointment to the cabinet. Seldom if ever more than six years. The bishop was not ordained but was consecrated and appointed to serve a conference or area by the Council of Bishops. Unless something untoward happened, a bishop could expect to serve about twelve years in his first appointment and the rest of his life in the second.

I’d been ordained for eighteen years and served six different churches when I was offered the leadership of First Church in Indianapolis. I went to my DS and asked to be excused from an appointment of that type. What I loved was my work with youth and as senior pastor of First, I’d have an assistant pastor and youth director who kept the youth separate from the adults in the church. They even had a retired minister serving a part time appointment as a visitation pastor for the sick and shut-ins. The cabinet did a heavy sales job on the appointment as a place where I could make an impact by revitalizing a city church in a changing environment.

What I saw was a place where my daughters would be lost in an environment that would constantly judge the effectiveness of the minister by the behavior of his children. That’s what living in the fishbowl was like. In our first church after Evelyn and I were married back in ‘65, members of the church and board of trustees thought nothing about just walking into the parsonage unannounced to make a repair or check on maintenance! They were shocked to find us making love in the middle of the day! Well, I was only twenty-five and Evelyn was twenty. I don’t know what they expected young newlyweds to be doing in the middle of the day.

I begged ... literally begged the cabinet to give me an appointment where I could stay until the girls had graduated from high school. For Sarah, that would be four years. For Hannah, six. Eventually, we settled on the little church near Mishawaka. The cabinet considered it a demotion as the membership was much smaller than the church I’d been serving in Fort Wayne. Yes, even among the clergy there was an acceptable route of promotions to ever bigger churches and higher salaries. Coming to Mishawaka meant a cut in pay as well as a smaller church. But it was a cut I was willing to take in exchange for being left there for six years. The bishop agreed and I was appointed.

And God saw all He had wrought, and behold, it was very good.

Sarah made an instant friend in Jessica Barnes. Two girls so different that I couldn’t imagine what drew them together. Jessica had already begun modeling teen fashions and had appeared in several advertisements. She was gregarious and other students admired and respected her. Sarah was just relieved that she might be able to make friends that would last throughout high school.

Hannah was even shyer than Sarah. The first year at St. Joe Valley Junior High she had made no friends. Then Jessica came to the rescue again. I wasn’t sure I believed or agreed with what she was saying when I overheard their conversation.

“You need friends, Hannah,” Jessica said. “Not just Sarah and me. We don’t have the same classes and aren’t in the same grade. You need people to eat lunch with and to go to ballgames with.”

“Nobody wants to be my friend,” Hannah moaned. She’d just turned thirteen and still acted ten.

“That’s not true. There are friends waiting for you out there that you’ve been hiding from. I can even point them out to you,” Jessica declared.

“You can’t. There isn’t anyone.”

“You follow my instructions and if you don’t have a dozen friends by the end of the day, I’ll buy you a pony!”

“Jessica!” Sarah laughed. “Where will Hannah keep a pony?”

“I know where there’s a barn,” she laughed.

“Hannah-bear, Jessica’s right. If people don’t know you want to be their friend, how are you ever going to have friends?”

“I’ll just lose them when we leave.”

“Daddy says we’re going to be here till graduation. You won’t lose your friends.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“I’ll tell you. It’s going to take all your courage, but I promise that if you do one thing, you will have friends at the end of the day who will never let you down,” Jessica said.

“What do I do?”

The instructions were simple but would require every ounce of courage my daughter could muster. I wondered if Jessica really had the power to convince a group of kids to adopt my daughter. I prayed every day that Hannah would find the courage to make the attempt.

“Just walk up to the table where they are sitting, look straight at Brian, and say ‘Hi. Can I join you?’ That’s all you have to do.”

“But what if he says no?”

“How many friends do you have now?” Jessica asked.

“None.”

“If he said no, how many friends would you have?”

“None.”

“Net zero. No risk. Things can’t get any worse than they are now. I know you have courage. I watched you ride your bicycle down the hill behind the church and right through the trees and into the creek. Walking up and saying five little words can’t take that much courage. And you know the kids at that table, even if you haven’t talked to them. Have you ever seen one of them say an unkind thing to anyone?”

“Then what?”

“After you talk them for a while, suggest they all come to the game Friday night. You like sports. Show them what you like.”

“I’ll try.”

It was the first time that I saw the kind of courage my daughter really had. She followed Jessica’s instructions on Friday and came home bouncing off the walls.

“I have friends! I have friends!”

“Are they going to the game tonight?”

“Um ... yeah. I think. At least one. Uh ... what if they ... he doesn’t show up? Can I sit with you and Jessica?”

“If they said they’d be there they will be. He,” she whispered. “He’ll call if he can’t get there. Maybe we can pick him up when we pick up Jessica.”

I met the boy in question for the first time that night when I picked the kids up after the game. It was a bit raucous in the car as they were still fired up over winning the game. Brian sat in the back seat between Hannah and Jessica with Sarah in front. There was a lively game of rock, paper, scissors. He got out at the same time Jessica did and went across the drive to the next house. So that was how Jessica knew they’d be friends. Her next-door neighbor.

Hannah bounced all over the back seat on the short drive home.

“I have a boyfriend! I have a boyfriend!”

“How did that happen?” I asked.

“We took a vote. My friend is a boy. We decided that made us boyfriend and girlfriend. We’ll have all kinds of fun!”

It was all I could do in the morning to restrain her from calling him before nine o’clock. I’d seen Hannah in manic times before but this was subtly different. This was genuine excitement over something new in her life. When she asked to go for a bike ride with him that morning I was happy to give permission.

“Reverend Gordon?” the woman on the phone said.

“Yes, this is he.”

“This is Marilyn Frost. I’m Brian Frost’s mother. It seems our children have become friends.”

“Boyfriend and girlfriend, from what I’m told,” I laughed. “By a vote of two to zero.”

“Are you okay with this?” she asked. “Brian is a good boy, but they are awfully young to be calling each other boyfriend and girlfriend.”

“Marilyn, I hope our families will get to know each other better. To start that off, let me say that to Hannah, having a boyfriend simply means she has a friend who is a boy. And being a girlfriend means that she is a girl and a friend. I think she would apply the terms to any girl or boy she was friends with,” I said.

“Oh, that’s such a relief. I don’t mind them being friends and playmates but some of the children in their group are a little more advanced and I didn’t want to have them thinking this was the romance of a lifetime and acting inappropriately.”

“I don’t think we need to worry about that for a while,” I said.

“Oh, I see they are riding down our driveway now. Do you mind if Hannah stays for lunch? I’ll toss her bike in the station wagon and drop her off after Brian makes his payment at the newspaper office.”

“That will be fine, Marilyn. It will give us an opportunity to meet each other and our children.”

That started three of the best years our family had ever had. There were emotional upheavals to be sure. Hannah was terribly depressed when she and Brian broke up but they both recovered quickly when they discovered that a bump in their personal relationship didn’t mean they lost all their friends. And Hannah became very close with Samantha—a bond they share to this day. I think Brian has a difficult time being a parent to Junior because he has two parents in Sam and Hannah already.