In the Garden

"And he walks with me,
and he talks with me,
and he tells me I am his own;
and the joy we share,
as we tarry there,
none other has ever known."

Josh Long is a big, friendly bear of a man with the beard of a lumberjack and big, rough hands. He laughs like an echo from the top of a mountain, booming down into a canyon and bouncing around. Everything about him is larger than life -- except, of course, for his ukelele. Yes. This big, burly man plays the ukelele. He carries it with him everywhere, loves to sit around and strum it and sing, "Dream a Little Dream," or a number of little half-melodies that remind me of a hula girl bobbing her head on the dashboard of a car. Wherever Josh is his ukelele is also, and wherever his ukelele is, it sounds like a tropical vacation.

Every once in awhile, Josh will play a hymn on his ukelele on Sunday mornings. He sits up on stage looking like a grown man stuffed into a chair made for a toddler, holding that tiny instrument and somehow making his big fingers pluck the little strings. It's a real treat to hear.

Last time he graced us with a tune, it was "In the Garden" -- and that morning I was reminded that reclamation is slow.

My parents started going to church when I was 15. I wish I could say his changed my life for the better, but it didn't. I'd been before: South Liberty, the church where my grandparents went, where I'd spent so many Sunday mornings when I was a little girl dropping shiny quarters into the offering plate and resting my head in my grandmother's lap. Church was an escape for me; it was a few hours every Sunday without dodging slaps or listening to my mother scream at my father for coming home drunk and passing out in the living room again. When my parents decided to go too, it was an intrusion, a desecration: a safe place no longer safe. A scary thing, and I shook with nerves that first morning.

My father stopped drinking: that was the one good thing to come of church. And even it came with a price tag -- the less Dale drank, the meaner he was. He quit cold turkey: no AA, no counseling, no one to help him detox. He'd rub his arms and shiver like he was crawling all over with bugs. He sweated through delirium tremens  like a mountain with an active volcano ready to blow. And after them, he was a different man: colder, harder, like a piece of flint. He yelled all the time, became a lot less tolerant of every little thing, and became much more fond of corporal punishment. He wasn't my Daddy anymore.

Religion didn't help. The little backwoods church became the center of his life, and everything that came out of the preacher's mouth was absolutely right. He learned to read a lot better so he could study the Bible for himself, but every conclusion he came to was inevitably the conclusion Brother Apple had already reached. He became narrow-minded and judgmental.  I chafed against him -- but I did like to hear him sing.

Now, don't be mistaken: unlike my mother, who crooned like Patsy Cline, my father couldn't carry a tune in a bucket. He couldn't even push it around in a wheelbarrow. He always had to ask me to help him -- we'd practice over and over again, and every time he got up to be the song leader, he *still* had to look at me the whole time. I wasn't allowed to lead any songs myself -- at South Liberty, women were suffocated, stuffed in a sack, and left back in the 16h century. We couldn't lead hymns or speak without permission, and teaching by women was only allowed as long as they taught children ages 13 and under. I once got in trouble for helping Dale by singing a little too loudly. Seriously. But watching him sing -- although not pretty by any means -- gave me the only glimpse of sincerity I ever really saw in my father. He was like a little boy following the movements of my mouth, the occasional flutter of my hand to say, "Up. Half a note up." He tried so hard to get it right; his effort was so earnest and sincere that sometimes he'd sweat.

His favorite song was "In the Garden." (It did take me that long to tie this together, didn't it? Sheesh.) After awhile he actually got pretty good at it, by which I mean he consistently sang the same series of notes, regardless of whether or not they were the right ones.

"I come to the garden alone, while the dew is still on the roses ..." 

I always got a picture in my head: big pink roses glistening with dew under a vast, cool sky streaked with thin clouds. I could smell the fresh air. I could see Jesus walking along in bare feet. I still can, when I close my eyes and think about it. But for some reason, when I recognized the melody to "In the Garden" and realized that the very same words I remembered my father singing were about to come out of Josh Long's mouth, all I felt was panic at the familiarity of it.

It's often that way with the little things: the songs, the sounds, the smells. It's like I step into a time warp right back to my old life: I fly through the good memory and have a fifth of a second to smile before all the bad things crowd in like they've just been standing around waiting for me to appear in the back of my own mind. Woodsmoke and motor oil make my pulse jump into my fingertips, and I still can't bring myself to purchase anything scented with vanilla. Wind chimes give me the urge to cover my ears and cry, and apparently "In the Garden" makes me want to hyperventilate and run, run away.

I am proud to say that I didn't do either of those things the Sunday Josh sang. There was a definite spike in my heart rate and I eyed the door longingly, but I stayed in my seat and kept my breathing steady. A year ago, two years ago, I'd have bolted out of there like a rabbit flushed from hiding, so I'm definitely getting better. By the end of the service, I was recovered. I'm troubled, though, by how the little things can sneak up on a person and deliver a blow to the head faster than I can snap my fingers. Makes me wonder what else is out there waiting to ambush me. Will I wake up tomorrow and be afraid of the doorbell or something? (Oh, wait. I'm already afraid of the doorbell. Scares the piss out of me every time it rings. Hey readers: if ever you come to visit, please oh please knock on the door.)

I find it kind of incongruous that I have conquered a former inability to sleep in the bed instead of on the couch, and yet I still can't pass Marconi's Garage without a hitch in my breathing. Maybe the little things only seem little when it comes to something like this. Reclamation is indeed slow, my friends. Mysterious and slow. Like watching a rose, waiting for it to bloom. Like waiting on a whole garden, sometimes. But these days, I don't wait alone -- and that makes all the difference.