“I always think of how it was for Dave and me that day we moved out of the one-room tractor shed.”
“With the drain in the floor,” I added.
“Yes, the drain in the floor. We have you and Jeff to thank for getting us out of there and into our first home.”
Looking down and tucking my hair behind my ear, I brushed off her praise.
“I don’t think there will ever be a way to thoroughly thank you and Jeff for all you did for us. I told Dave that was part of the reason I wanted to bring you with me on this trip. I wanted to say thanks. Thanks for your friendship, Sharon. Sometimes I wonder where I’d be without you, and that’s a scary thought. I’d probably be dead in some gutter somewhere. Or at least in prison.”
I laughed.
“You think I’m joking. Wolf predicted I’d be dead before I was thirty.”
“Wolf?”
Penny didn’t move. Holding her forkful of lasagna in midair, Penny’s left eyebrow elevated. She offered me a closed-mouth grin like a peace offering. “I never told you about Wolf, did I?”
“I think I would have remembered hearing about someone named Wolf.”
Penny put down her fork, folded her hands, and leaned across our small table there in front of the window that opened to a dark, hidden world. “Wolf was sort of my first husband.”
I told my face to stay still.
“I never told you because it was part of my messed-up life before Jesus and before Dave and before I even knew who I was. You told me once that you didn’t want to hear about all that stuff.” She seemed to be waiting for absolution or, at the very least, an invitation.
“I don’t mind hearing about it now,” I heard myself say. “I’d like to hear about Wolf, if you want to talk about him.”
Relief washed over Penny’s face. “Well, he was wild. I was, of course, on the wild side, too. I was seventeen, and you know, my mom didn’t know anything. It was the sixties, and a couple of my friends were driving up to San Francisco in their VW Bug the day school was out. I thought I’d be gone for a week, but it turned out I was gone all summer.”
I had heard bits about her summer in San Francisco before, but Penny had never shared details.
“I met Wolf in the park our first day in San Francisco. He had hair out to here with little wire-rimmed glasses, bell-bottoms, hippie beads, the whole flower child outfit. He was something to behold. Tall, with big feet laced up in these leather sandals he had made himself. I took one look at him, and I thought he was the coolest guy I’d ever seen. He looked up at me from where he was sitting under a tree. He got up, came over, and said, “Hey, Moonglow, wanna dance?”
“Moonglow, huh?”
“Yeah, Moonglow. He said wolves liked to howl at the glow of the moon, and he wanted to howl at me.”
“Now there’s a clever pick-up line.”
“It worked. But then, I was seventeen. He also said he liked my shirt. It was one of those embroidered Mexican wedding shirts. Do you remember those?”
I shook my head.
“Well, anyway, Wolf said he liked my embroidered shirt and my long hair. I thought his John-the-Baptist look was very cool, but he was doused with patchouli oil. Do you remember patchouli oil?”
I shook my head again. Penny and I may have lived during the same era, but I obviously didn’t experience it the way she did.
“I never liked patchouli oil. It’s too strong and too smoky-green, sweet-mossy smelling. But anyway, we danced to some earthy flute music a girl was playing a few yards away, and my friends ditched me. I didn’t know where they went, so I stayed with Wolf.”
“For how long?”
“About three months.” Penny looked down and stuck her fork in her lasagna.
“Wow,” I said quietly.
“Yeah, wow. Crazy, huh?”
I muttered Penny’s longtime catch phrase, “Yeah, crazy like a daisy.”
“Are you sure you want to hear all this, Sharon?”
I hesitated only a second before saying, “Yes, I do. I want to know about your whole life, not just the parts I made you clean up before you told me. I thought about this last night, Penny. I never should have censored you.”
“Censored me?”
“You know what I mean. Like when you were baptized, and I told you only to talk about what God did in your life and not talk about your past.”
Penny gave me a surprised look. “That was a long time ago. And you were right. It was much better to put the focus on Christ and not on me.”
“What I’m trying to say is that I want you to feel the freedom to tell me whatever you want to tell me. I don’t want you ever to hold back because you think I might be too sensitive.”
“Thanks for saying that, Sharon. It does feel good to talk about Wolf after all these years. My perspective keeps adjusting the farther away I get from that time.”
“So what happened during that summer when you were staying with Wolf?”
Penny paused and looked at me as if offering one last out before she dove in. When I didn’t move, she said, “Okay. The uncut version of the summer I was seventeen. I should say that Wolf did a lot of drugs that summer. I didn’t. I’ve never done well on any kind of meds, and maybe it’s my controlling nature or something, but I couldn’t stand not having all my faculties at full performance level.
“Wolf and I argued about the drugs a lot. We made stuff and sold it every weekend at this place called the Hippie Market.”
“What did you make?”
“Hemp bracelets, bead necklaces, and these macramé things for hanging plants. Wolf made leather belts and sandals. We were married at the beach sometime in July. The minister said it was legal, but I doubted it. Of course, it didn’t matter much at the time. Our calligraphied certificate said, ‘On this day Wolf and Moonglow were united by Bob, Minister of World Peace.’ ”
“Oh, Penny.” I covered my mouth and tried not to laugh.
“I know. Go ahead, you can laugh. It seems incredible to me now. When Dave and I met five years later, I tried to make sure I wasn’t still legally married to Wolf. I took my marriage certificate to the county clerk, and he pretty much laughed me out of his office.”
“Whatever happened to him? Wolf, I mean?”
“We had a huge fight on a cold night in August, and before you say anything, yes, it can get miserably cold in San Francisco on summer nights. Wasn’t it Mark Twain who said the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco?”
I shrugged.
“Anyway. I was done being a flower child. I wanted to leave San Francisco and go home. I told Wolf we could live at my mom’s until we could afford a place of our own. Wolf said I was uptight, locked in to the establishment, and destined to burn myself out and die before I turned thirty.”
“That was a pretty awful thing to say.”
“I said worse things to him. It was so ugly, you know? We were trapped in this big deception that we were free and living in the summer of peace and love. But it wasn’t free or peaceful or loving at all. It was dark and lonely and painfully stupid. My mother was a saint for taking me back without a lot of questions.”
I gazed into the flickering candlelight at our table. “Do you ever wonder if Wolf is the one who ended up dead before he was thirty?”
“Good question. Who knows? Wolf could have discovered the computer industry like Dave did and now be Mr. Corporate America. He was very intelligent and great at figuring things out.”
“Have you ever thought how strange it is that you and Dave now live in San Francisco?”
Penny nodded. “I like San Francisco a lot more now than I did then. The park is still pretty much the same. One time I was there with the kids, and I thought I heard flute music. I stood in the park thinking, ‘Did my past really happen here? Or did I dream it up and the park just happens to resemble this one?’ I’m such a different person now. She sighed. “So that’s the scoop on Wolf.”
“Thank you, Penny. Thank you for givi
ng me your story.”
“My story. Yes, that’s what it is.” She pushed away her dinner plate. “For better or worse, it’s definitely my story. I can’t change it. I’m just grateful God did.”
We silently sipped our warm tea, finding solace in the candle’s golden glow. Outside tiny snowflakes flung themselves against the window, as if they were trying to come inside and share our moment. I felt protected. Not only from the determined snowflakes, but also as if my whole life I’d been protected from the cold world out there.
The waiter placed the check on the table. Penny pulled out a credit card. “I would like to go to church tomorrow,” she said. “How about you?”
“Sure.” I remembered how limited my wardrobe was and added, “If I can borrow something nice to wear.”
As it turned out, I wore one of Penny’s long skirts with my new blue sweater set on Sunday morning; but I never took off my coat, so it didn’t really matter. We sat toward the back of the sanctuary. A stiff chill raced underneath our pew and sent rows of goose bumps up my legs.
The traditional service included lots of standing and sitting, which kept the blood flowing to my feet. The liturgy was all in Finnish, of course, but read with such gentle rhythm that I closed my eyes and imagined the words to be a long, lovely poem.
What I loved was the solemnity of the worship. I loved the solid beauty of this old sanctuary and the way this was definitely a church every day of the week. It wasn’t a multipurpose room with folding chairs and tilted-up basketball hoops like our church in Chinook Springs. We were sitting reverently in a holy place that had been set apart for one purpose, and because I shared that purpose with those around me, the language wasn’t a barrier.
I stared at one of the stained glass windows that depicted Jesus standing on the shore, calling out to the disciples as they were fishing. I guessed it was based on the time when they fished all night and caught nothing. Jesus told them to cast their nets on the other side of the boat, and when they did what He said, they couldn’t pull up all the fish they had caught.
The sunlight came through the window so clearly that the silvery fish seemed bright enough to jump out of the net and ride a yellow and green beam of light all the way into the boat. I thought about those trusting disciples. What an illogical command it was. “Cast your nets on the other side of the boat.” Why? Why would there be a bounty of fish on one side when all night nothing had been caught on the other side?
My mind wandered as I thought about Penny’s and my illogical trip. Is it possible that Christ commanded the same sort of thing from His disciples today? When we jumped over the moon, was Jesus asking us to cast our nets on the other side of the world to catch more … more what?
People getting up from the pews and going forward to take communion interrupted my thoughts. As long as I could remember, communion had been brought to me; I didn’t go to it. Communion was passed to me on a doily in the form of tiny, pressed pellets and plastic thimbles of grape juice.
Rising with the others, Penny and I made our way down the aisle while a soprano sang a cappella from the balcony. I felt as if we had been transported to medieval times and were participating in an ancient ritual.
Then I realized we were.
How many millions of believers for these thousands of years have come to hundreds of thousands of communion tables just like the one we were approaching? How many times had those believers done what Penny and I were about to do in remembrance of Christ?
On this solid table, covered with a pure white linen cloth, a single candle burned. An exquisite goblet stood round and tall beside a round loaf of thick-crusted bread. The bread had been broken in two. I watched how Penny partook, and then I stepped forward, broke off a piece of bread, and dipped it in the goblet. Closing my eyes, I silently prayed and touched the bread to my tongue. My mouth woke up.
That was wine. The goblet is filled with wine!
All my senses were at full alert as I followed the other pilgrims down the aisle. Your blood, Jesus. Your blood. Shed for me. Your body. Broken. For me.
I didn’t expect the tears that came as I swallowed the small piece of sharp, holy remembrance. I knew that when I returned home, communion would mean so much more than it ever had because I was seeing the sacrifice of Christ with new eyes.
I sat with my head bowed, letting the tears drip on my folded hands. The congregation rose to sing a final hymn. “Holy, Holy, Holy.” I knew almost all the words in English, so I sang along as the tears continued to race down my cheeks. The service ended with a benediction, but I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to linger in this holy place. I watched the faces of God’s people as they exited. One elderly woman wearing a hat made eye contact with me. I smiled, and she smiled back.
I’ll see you in heaven, won’t I, Gentle Woman? I couldn’t remember ever having thoughts like these at home when I went to church.
“I wish I had my Bible,” I told Penny, as we walked three blocks to a restaurant we had spotted on the way to church.
“Is it in your suitcase?”
“No, I left it at home. I miss having it. Isn’t that strange? I have nothing except the miscellaneous items in my purse and the clothes I’m wearing, but the only thing I miss is my Bible.”
We talked about the church service over a simple lunch of yogurt, rye toast, and hard-boiled eggs at the deli-style restaurant. Penny had the same sorts of feelings I’d had.
I told her what I was thinking about when I looked at the shimmering fish in the stained glass window, and she said, “It sounds to me as if you did cast your net on the other side of your life today at communion. Look at all the shimmering bits of glory you’re pulling in now!”
I liked that. Shimmering bits of glory. I liked the idea of living a life that was full of silvery, flapping bits of shimmering glory. I felt as if all the fences and filters were coming off my sheltered life. Penny was giving me her story, uncensored. I was partaking of communion, undiluted. All that had been shadows in my understanding were taking solid form.
For the rest of the day I felt the lingering beauty of the worship service and the piercing reminder that filled my mouth when I tasted the bread and the wine.
We toured two downtown Helsinki parks in the pale winter sunshine. When we were too cold to walk anymore, we found a little place that served thick, strong coffee with cubes of sugar and tiny silver pots of cream. Penny had a slice of cake with a puddinglike frosting, and I had an expensive bowl of arctic brambleberries with cream. Penny tried mine and said I definitely had made the better choice.
We walked back to our hotel after dinner and fell into bed feeling fully “sabbathed,” as Penny put it.
Monday morning our first priority was to contact the airport to check on my luggage. The clerk on the other end of the phone said they had a possible lead on where my bag had been misrouted, but they hadn’t been able to confirm it.
“Please call again this evening,” the nasal-sounding voice said on the other end of the phone.
“I will. Believe me, I’ll call again.”
Penny thought we shouldn’t contact Tuija’s husband at the government offices until later in the afternoon. That left the morning open for more shopping. All the department stores had been closed on Sunday, and I was glad. It had caused us to slow down, walk in the park, and talk about a dozen things other than ourselves or our bodies.
Taking a cab back to the large department store we had visited on Saturday, Penny suggested we bypass the chocolate counter because she wanted to buy a lot and didn’t want to carry it all over the store. We headed straight for the lingerie department.
I should let it be known at this point in the story that my whole life I have shopped for underwear at K. C. Lorren’s, which was the only department store in our area for almost thirty years before they built the Westland Mall. I’m certain my mom took me to K. C. Lorren’s for my first bra, and from then on, Lorren’s was the only place to buy what my mother had referred to as “unmentionabl
es.”
I rode the elevator with Penny thinking, How can I possibly buy unmentionables in Helsinki when I can barely bring myself to buy them at home? At least at Lorren’s I know what to look for and where everything is located, and that makes it a quick trip.
If I could have put off this task until I got home, I would have. But I didn’t want to go another day sporting Penny’s saggy silkies.
Selecting the panties turned out to be easy. Kaylee, whenever she helped fold clothes, referred to my style of underwear as “basic cotton Mom-o panties.” Apparently they are a standard model available for Mom-os around the world because I found a package of white Mom-os right away.
“You and your Mom-o basics,” Penny teased me. “Do you remember when we burned that pair of Mom-o denim jeans?”
“Yes! Those pants were pathetic!”
“I know. I can’t believe we didn’t save them and try to enter them into the Guinness Book of World Records for ‘most worn pair of ugly pants.’ ”
The legacy of the Mom-o denims started when I was pregnant for the first time. The jeans were a strange color. Sort of a nasty faded khaki green. My sister-in-law, Bonnie, gave me the baggy pants when I was two months pregnant because she said she liked having something loose to wear the first few months before she needed maternity clothes and then again during the few months after the baby was born.
She was right. I appreciated the worn-in comfort and elastic waist. I wore them when I was pregnant with Tyler and Ben and then loaned them to Penny after she had Noah. We traded those hideous pants back and forth through all seven of our combined pregnancies. I mended them twice and was certain they eventually would disintegrate in the washing machine. But they didn’t.
One clear autumn afternoon, Penny came over with the green Mom-o denims in a big wad. “Don’t let the kids see us do this,” she said. “But we’re going to torch these Mom-o losers!”
“Why?”
“Our pregnancy days are over, Sharon. Neither you nor I will ever wear these hideous blobber-britches again. That’s why they must burn. The world should never again be exposed to the sight of them.”