Inspirational stories of God's love and grace...

HOME IN MY HEART

By Terri Elders

When I first saw Scotts Mills, population 200, WWII was ending. My family fled Los Angeles in the paranoia over potential nuclear submarine attacks, settling in Oregon’s Willamette Valley, miles from the Pacific. For three years we lived in a rambling two-story Victorian house with a wooden staircase, a root cellar and a barn.

Grandma grumbled about the dark clouds, fog, and drizzle. She tracked the weather on her kitchen calendar and claimed the sun broke through only nine days one entire summer. Daddy, who played a sweet swing cornet, rounded up a trio to perform at local dances, but groused about having to include a schmaltzy accordion for keyboards, not quite right on And the Angels Sing, his signature song.

Mama missed her suburban coffee klatches. On weekends she coaxed my big sister and me into playing Chinese checkers, bribing us with heavily-sugared cups of her favorite beverage. Grandpa grew parsnips and endive and teased my little brother with garden snakes, but muttered about needing to drive seven dang miles to Silverton to purchase his Old Crow at the state liquor store.

For me, a curious 8-year-old, Scotts Mills outshone Wonderland, NeverNeverLand and Oz. I picked wild iris, blackberries, and crab apples. I earned dimes for comic books by toting Grandma’s wicker basket to the general store for items she’d forgotten at the Silverton Safeway. At night I spotted what Daddy claimed was the Andromeda cluster. He hinted that when winter came we might see the aurora borealis.

Grandma taught me how to dogpaddle in the dam and to ignore kids’ claims that the Loch Ness Monster’s cousin lurked in its murky waters. Daddy taught me to wear a long-sleeved flannel shirt on the mornings when I carried wood to the box by the kitchen stove. Mama taught me to watch for broken glass when I waded in Silver Creek, plus some sneaky opening Chinese checker ploys. Grandpa taught me how to identify poison oak and make vinegar compresses, but only after I came home blistered and weeping.

Come September, I skipped third grade. Consequently, my teacher, Miss Magee, spent long hours after school explaining times tables and remainders so I could catch up. The three-room schoolhouse lumped grades three through five together. Dwarfed by my classmates, I sat with grade four in the middle row, where classmates on each side could jeer as I sucked my thumb, chewed my pigtails, and gnawed my pencils. They called me Terri Termite until Miss Magee reviewed The Golden Rule.

In this town founded by Quakers, the Friends Church, built in l892, located two blocks downhill from our home on Grandview, was the cynosure of spiritual life. Weekly I trudged off to Sunday school, intent on earning my first New Testament. I craved the pocket-sized book with red leatherette covers, offered as a prize for four months of perfect attendance. So I set out on even sleety mornings, ignoring Grandma’s warnings that I’d catch a cold or the dreaded flu.

In the basement I listened as missionaries recounted exotic tales of their work in East Africa. “I’m going to be just like them,” I told my family. “I’ll see jungles and monkeys and teach children how to read.” From the missionaries too I learned how to pray for others, and not just myself. I prayed that my classmates would grow in grace enough to stop teasing me and other vulnerable children, such as the boy with the hare lip.

In l948, to my dismay, my family scurried back to the city bustle of Los Angeles that they missed so much. I got caught up with junior and senior high school, boyfriends, youth groups at a variety of churches, and not too much later, even marriage and a child of my own. But the messages I heard from Miss McGee and the Friends Church remained with me. I valued perseverance and discipline, compassion and social justice.

As I neared 50 and was preparing to leave for an overseas assignment with the Peace Corps, my son came by to visit. He wanted to see his childhood photos, so I got out the duffle bag. We sipped lemonade and reminisced. As we neared the bottom of the bag, Steve pulled out an 8x12 and there I was in pigtails and bangs, clad in plaid flannel shirt and rolled up jeans, surrounded by Scotts Mills classmates.

I told him about singing Do Lord in the choir, leaving secret messages coded from Bible verse under the maple tree for the neighbor children, about Grandma’s lemon meringue pie winning praise at the covered dish suppers in the basement of the Friends Church.

Steve smiled. “It sounds as if you loved it there. Will you ever go back?”

“They say you can’t go home again, but I think that little village has always been home in my heart.”

This past year at age 70 I returned to Scotts Mills. I drove over early from a motel in Silverton and sat quietly in the rear pew of the miniscule church. When the pianist tinkled a few practice notes, I recognized the melody and found it in the old hymnal before me, Be Still My Soul. Under the title I read, “Be still, and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10. The phrase “center down” popped into my head, the basic premise of the Friends Church. I remembered how I had learned as a child to clear my mind of chatter to receive a spiritual message.

Later I toured the town’s museum, and chatted with a former classmate who lived across the way. He remembered how the children teased. After I had learned to “center down,” I no longer needed to chew my pencils. I think the boy with the hare lip too learned to ignore the children’s taunts. Driving back to Silverton I hummed my father’s favorite, And the Angels Sing.

Whenever I remember to “center down” I can hear the angels harmonize and again feel home in my heart.