The Church Lady Elegy

When I was a kid, church ladies ran the whole world. Elderly women were always telling me what to do, randomly appearing from the shadows and trying to feed me.

Our little microcosmic community was operated by elderly women in beehive hairdos. They drove Lincolns, Mercury Grand Marquis, or Ford F-100 pickups with gun racks.

Church ladies carried the keys to our universe. Not metaphorically, but worse. Allegorically. The keys to the school, the library, the church building, they were all on huge keychains which these ladies carried in their prodigious church-lady purses, which were bags about the size of Waffle Houses.

You could find anything you needed in those purses. Professional-grade first-aid kits, cosmetic supplies, a change of underpants, spare tires, etc. And if you were hungry, you could find a three-course meal in such a purse, although the food was likely to taste like Rolaids and purse dirt.

So, these were the women who raised me. They were always present in my life. They taught every class, directed every pageant, prepared every fellowship-hall supper, played piano for every Fifth Sunday sing, visited every hospital, and babysat you when your mom worked doubles.

And when you lost a loved one, it was these church ladies who organized the committee that overloaded your front porch with casseroles.

Which is exactly what happened when my father died. My father died by his own hand when I was 11. And the very next morning, I heard voices on our porch before sunrise. Ladies’ voices.

There were elderly women, leaving casserole pans, glass cookware, covered in foil, and Corningware dishes, nestled in gingham dishrags.

And it was also one such church lady who took pity on me in the weeks after my father died. After my father’s end, I lost weight because I could not eat. I slept all the time.

I’ll never forget the morning when one such elderly woman came to visit me. She took me in her Mercury Grand Marquis to the hospital one autumn afternoon.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

She didn’t even look at me. “You’ll see. Would you like a cookie?”

“No, ma’am.”

“They’re butterscotch.”

“No, thank you.”

“Don’t you like butterscotch?”

“Maybe just one.”

We arrived at the hospital, where another church lady was waiting for us. A lady I had never met before. Church ladies are like police departments, they have precincts all over this country.

The women took me to the third floor. There, we were greeted by more church ladies who were waiting for us.

They washed my little hands and dressed me in a paper gown. They put shoe-covers over my Chuck Taylors. They told me to be very quiet when we entered the next room.

Whereupon the church ladies and I entered the NICU.

There were babies everywhere. Infants in clear plastic crates. With little bodies, so pink against the stark white blankets, they looked like giant hotdogs. Plastic tubes were coming from their faces. Oxygen cannulas draped beneath their tiny noses.

“These babies need your love,” they told me.

The ladies sat me in an enormous easy chair and placed a newborn into my arms. They said my job was to cuddle.

And so it was, I cuddled infants for three hours. One baby, I’ll never forget her, was so small. I told her I loved her and she clasped her tiny hand around my finger. Which is how a baby says I love you back.

And well, that was the first day I felt like eating.