The summer that I turned three, August 18, 1954, was momentous in my life as it is the time that the foundation was laid for all that would follow. I have a couple of memories of before that time, but they are only flashes, not real memories. But the summer of 1954, I remember well.
My mother was very pregnant with my younger brother (born July 4, 1954.) We lived on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, part of the Delmarva Peninsula and my father worked on the Navy Base there. My maternal grandmother, my “Papaw” and my mother’s sister, Aunt Kate lived together, not far away, near Guard Shore, Virginia.
I spent a lot of time with my grandparents and my Aunt Kate that summer. I adored my Aunt Kate and treasured every moment that I spent with her. She belonged to an exercise club called the “Grunts and Groans Club.” She would take me along, and I believed that I was part of the club and tried my best to exercise too. I remember one evening after the session as we walked to the car, I was chatting away in my usual fashion and suddenly I noticed that Aunt Kate didn’t talk as much as I did. I said something to her and she said, “I’m just the quiet type, I guess.” I thought about that for a couple of minutes and then said, “I must be the talky type, I guess.”
My days during that time were happy and carefree. I played with the cat, Hogan. I swung on the swing under “my tree.” I went to the beach every day with my grandmother, and “helped” her in the garden or in the kitchen. On the weekends my parents would take me to the beach. My father loved to swim and sometimes would swim along the shore with me on his back with my arms wrapped around his neck. I was aware of the strength of the water, but I was also aware of my father’s strength as he swam so that my head was always just above the water. It was exhilarating; my trust of my father overcoming my fear of the water.
One evening my father came home from work late. It was almost sunset. He was driving faster than usual. I remember the gravel of the driveway spewing from under the tires as he applied the brakes. It made a big noise and it was unusual for my father to drive that way. He got out of the car and started yelling for me to run to him. I did as I was told, half afraid that I had done something wrong, but knowing that disobedience would be disaster. He swept me up and carried me to the car and plopped me in the seat next to him. He spun out of the driveway and sped down the road to Guard Shore. It is a small place on the Eastern bank of the Chesapeake Bay. I can’t remember if he talked on the way there. I know that if he didn’t, I didn’t. I adored my father, but I was afraid of him, too. He could be unpredictable. Yet, I can remember that he was nearly trembling with excitement. And I loved it when he drove really fast. We were there in only a couple of minutes.
He pulled me from the car, stood me on the rocks and held my hand. “Watch,” he said. I looked out over the water, which to me was the same as the ocean. The sun was just getting ready to set. The gulls were calling. The sand pipers were pip ping. The water was lapping at the shore. We did not talk. Just stood in the quiet, watching. The sun began to set. The sky lit up like it was on fire. The water reflected the fire. Suddenly the whole world was ablaze with red, yellow, and blue fire. It nearly blinded me. It was so beautiful that it took away my breath. We stood in silence until the sunset and darkness engulfed us.
“I just wanted you to see it,” he said. He picked me up and carried me back to the car.
Over the last 52 years of my life, I have seen many sunsets over the water and photographed a few. But I have never seen one that was anything like that one. The conditions must have been just right for that spectacular display. My father must have known some scientific piece of knowledge, that I didn’t know until this day, to be able to predict that moment.
As I read this aloud to my husband and my son, my husband had a very good guess as to what my father knew. When there is a volcano erupting somewhere in the earth, and if the jet stream picks up the ash, it can carry it for thousands of miles causing spectacular sunsets. My father, working at the Navy base radio station had access to the Teletype messages and weather reports. Geology was his hobby (and my husband’s.) Armed with this knowledge and the approximate date, my son Paul was able to find the volcano and the appropriate weather conditions of that summer to cause the spectacular sunset that I witnessed with my father.
I feared my father. I reveled in his strength. I trusted his abilities. I believed he could overcome all obstacles. I delighted in his intelligence. I adored him. And at that time in my life, I believed he loved me. Later he would have times when his sanity would leave him. Then I feared him, hid from him, and grieved at my loss. But that summer the foundation was laid to know and trust a heavenly Father that was perfect.
My Aunt Kate and my grandmother were Catholic. My parents didn’t attend church. So on the weekends that I was at Grandma’s house, I went to church. Aunt Kate had bought me a little shiny white pocket book to match my shiny white shoes. She had given me a little lace handkerchief to put in it and she always gave me a dime to put in the offering plate. I had little white gloves and a little hat. And Aunt Kate had even given me a little sample bottle of “White Shoulders” perfume, which I was only allowed to dab on my neck and wrists on Sunday. I had a little rosary, which Aunt Kate had taught me how to pray. My mother had already taught me all of the prayers. So Aunt Kate only had to teach me how to use the rosary.
My grandmother taught my Sunday school class. I felt very grown up. The little church did not have air conditioning so we had stiff paper fans. I remember that they all had pictures from the Bible on them. I knew all of the stories from the Bible that they represented. I could look around the church at the ladies using the fans and remember every story. It was as if the whole church were telling me stories. And I loved the whir of the big fan in the front of the church. The whole atmosphere of the church was this big wonderful comfortable loving place for me.
Then something happened that changed my life. It was a typical Sunday. Aunt Kate got me ready and we drove to church. I was chatting away as we arrived. We took our pew. And then Aunt Kate said, “Now, Becky, I want you to sit there on the pew and be quiet while I talk to God, don’t interrupt us while we talk.” I knew better than to interrupt grown-ups when they are talking. “Ok,” I said. I sat silently watching her talk, and listen, as she prayed.
I didn’t know until much later in my life that Aunt Kate had entered a convent as a novice, a closed order, and found that she was not suited to that life. She had too much of a desire to have a family, but she also had a very deep relationship with God.
I only knew as I sat there that day, that she was talking to God and He was talking back. I knew that when I prayed my memorized prayers that I was praying to God, but that was not TALKING to Him. And I didn’t think He talked to me. I thought about this. I knew I wanted to talk to God and I wanted Him to talk to me. I thought about the fact that Aunt Kate was the quiet type. She didn’t talk as much as me. Yet she talked to God. I decided I could talk to God, too. After all, I’m the talky type. I reasoned that if God made me, and I was sure He did, and He made me talky, then He must have wanted me to talk to Him. I never doubted for one moment that God would not be interested in my day. Everyone else listened to me.
Later in my life I would be less assured. But at that turning point, the desire for the relationship and the assurance that if I wanted it, I could have it came together. I didn’t stop praying “rote” prayers. But I started talking to God as I did to everyone else. I wasn’t bothered at first that I did not hear Him talking back. I talked to grownups a lot, and they didn’t talk back all of the time. Maybe God was the quiet type. A couple of years would go by before I became frustrated that God did not talk back. Or at least I didn’t think He was talking. I didn’t doubt that He heard me. But I had come to the point that I thought he should talk back. Today, I am sure He was, only I had no idea of how to listen, or how to acknowledge Him.
When I was 4 my immediate family moved back to Ohio. My father took a job working for AT&T. He also repaired people’s televisions for extra money in the evenings. These were the old tube televisions. Often he would let me go with him and watch. By the time I was 5 and a half I was quite accustomed to the workings of a television. I loved to play with the oscilloscope making pictures of waves with my voice or other sounds. I could hear the tubes “sing.” And I knew which tube was burnt out because its voice was missing from the “song.” But my father needed a tube checker to find the burnt out tube. Much later as a teenager in physics class, my teacher would test the hearing of all of our class. This is when I discovered how much more I could hear than the “normal” person. But even at 5 years old I realized that I could hear the tubes sing and my father could not.
It was the summer of 1957 that the next milestone of faith happened. My Aunt Ruth and Uncle Oafa planned a trip from Ohio back to Eastern Shore to visit my grandmother and agreed to take me with them. Aunt Kate would bring me home before school started, on the train. I got to spend the whole summer at Grandma’s house. And the summer went as one might expect, one pleasant day running into the next. Hogan had kittens. The swing was still there. Grandma and I picked strawberries, shelled peas, made homemade noodles, went to the beach and, of course, to church. Papaw fixed me clams and eggs for breakfast and took me fishing.
One Saturday morning Papaw and I went out to catch flounder. I am sure Papaw had checked the weather the night before, but we were quite far out from shore when a storm blew in very quickly. The sky darkened and the wind blew hard. It made large waves. Papaw grew up on the water. He knew just how to steer the little boat into the wave. Up we went and SMACK down we came. I loved it. “Do it again, Papaw, “ I yelled. “Do it again.” Not for one minute was I afraid. The sky was dark, the wind was fierce, the waves were high and my blood was racing with excitement. It was not that I was so naive that I didn’t know boats could tip over. I knew it would not happen to us. I knew that Papaw was good with the boat. My Daddy had said so; otherwise Daddy would not let me go with Papaw. I also knew that my Daddy God was in charge of the storm, the sea, the boat and me. I felt like it was all for my benefit. When we finally made it to shore, Papaw put me in the cab of the truck and put the boat on the trailer. I nestled up to him for warmth on the way home. When we got home, Papaw carried me into the house. Grandma had towels ready and bowls of hot soup. I was at the table eating when I over heard Grandma say, “Wasn’t she afraid?” And I looked up to see that Papaw was shaking and heard the fear in his voice as he said, “No, she kept yelling at me to do it again.” Years later I would learn that though Papaw was a “waterman” he didn’t know how to swim. And I was an adult when Papaw gave his life to Christ and came to know just how loved he really was. That day on the water he didn’t know that God was in the boat with us. I did. I didn’t see Him. I just knew that He was there.
As the summer progressed, as I played, every day all day long, I talked to God. I thanked Him for all of the beautiful things in my life, one at a time! I thanked Him for the blue sky, the strong tree, swinging high, Hogan kittens, the salty ocean, the starry night—on and on. I told Him what I thought of that big nasty dog and the strange fish with two eyes on one side of their body (flounder.) What ever entered my little mind, I ran it past God. Never doubting that He wanted to hear all about my day. He was my best friend, my Daddy God and of course He wanted to hear me. And then one day I began to doubt. Not a big doubt but a nagging one. Why didn’t I hear God talking back? Was I bothering Him, talking so much? Sometimes grown-ups didn’t want to listen to children. And a hurt began to grow in my heart.
Then one night I was laying on my cot in Aunt Kate’s room, looking out the window while Aunt Kate read in her book before we turned out the lights. The window looked out over the front lawn. Suddenly under “my tree,” standing near my swing, was Mary. I knew in a heartbeat it was Mary. She wasn’t wearing a blue dress. She looked almost like lit fog. She shined, yet she was like a mist. She was all white light. I looked at her for a couple of minutes before I spoke to Aunt Kate. I had already learned not to trust grown-ups with every thought, and so I was careful. I said, “Aunt Kate, look out the window and tell me what you see.” She said, “I don’t see anything. Why, what to you see?” “I don’t know,” I answered, “I thought I saw something under the tree.” “Well, there is nothing there now,” she said and went back to her book. Mary was standing there. I continued to study her. The image of her became a permanent fixture in my brain. Her hands were together, as if in prayer, and over her little fingers hung a rosary. It draped all the way to the ground. I had never seen a rosary that long, or even a picture of one. I thought it was amazing and I thought how many prayers it would be. As I looked at Mary, I knew with certainly that her son; Jesus had sent her to me to tell me that He loved me. She didn’t speak the words. She didn’t have to. Her heart emanated the love directly to my heart. I knew with surety, without words, that she had come because Jesus sent her. Jesus had sent His mommy to me. And I knew that God did love me, and my prayers. She did not leave until after I had fallen asleep in that love. I told no one for many years of what I saw that night. I didn’t know until much later that Mary had appeared to other children. I never saw her again. I only knew that God loved me and did not tire of hearing me “prattle on.” He was not like grown-ups who were often too busy to listen. He enjoyed my sharing. He liked the fact that I loved everything that He made. His lap was a safe place for me. The knowledge of that love would carry me through the upcoming “scary years.”
That same summer I noticed the picture of “The Sacred Heart of Jesus” in my aunt’s room. There were pictures of Mary and Jesus everywhere in my grandmother’s house and at the church. I had grown up with them all around me. But this one afternoon, it was as if the picture drew me in. I sat cross-legged on the floor in front of it and contemplated the heart of Jesus. Having just had the experience with Mary, I had a new understanding of God’s love. But this day I contemplated upon the sadness in Jesus’ heart. I knew of the sacrifice that He made for sin and His great love for us all. But this day I knew of the great sadness in His heart for those people that do not know Him, that do not know His love, and those that reject Him. Before that day, I don’t think that I ever considered someone NOT loving God. It was on this day that I realized not only are there people who don’t love God, but that also His heart is so sad because they don’t. I wanted to rush into His arms and wipe away His tears and say, “I will love you always.”
How could I know of the dark days that would follow? But that summer the foundations were laid that all hell could not shake. Yes, there would be dark days of abuse and fear. And there would be much sin on my part. There would be days when I would begin to doubt my faith and evil would nearly prevail. But God had planted in me something no one, not even demons, could take away, – the knowledge of His Heart.
