Frog Pond. The Third Part.

She nodded and leaned back slightly in her chair, her fingers folding over one another as if she were holding something precious between them.

“Your father—he wasn’t loud like some of the other men at church. He was gentle, soft-spoken. Thoughtful. The kind of person who’d listen longer than he spoke.” Her voice wavered a little. Her eyes reddened.

“When your mother sang in the choir, he’d sit in the front pew like she was the only one in the room. Never missed a Sunday. Never missed a chance to remind her how proud he was of her.

I couldn’t help but smile. It was strange—he didn’t feel like a myth anymore. He felt like a man who’d hold a door open, who’d smell like old books and aftershave.

Mrs. Rockner continued. “He once told me that he hoped to teach his child—not just to be good, but to be kind. ‘You can be both,’ he said. ‘Kindness takes strength.’” She tapped the cover of the Bible. “And faith takes that same kind of strength.”

“So you we friends?” I asked, though I was certain I knew the answer.

“Oh yes, great friends,” She answered. “He and my late husband worked the mines together. In fact, we moved to Frog Pond shortly after he arrived and met your mother.”

I had heard the stories of how they met. My father arrived in Frog. Pond with nothing but ambition and a suitcase. I am not sure why he settled here. Mother always told me that it was never his intention to stay. Yet, when he met her all those plans went with the wind.

As the story goes my father arrived on a Sunday morning. He walked through the door of New Jerusalem Baptist church carrying a suitcase. Removing his hat from his head, he placed it against his chest and mouthed, “excuse me.” The preacher stared him down. He should have thanked him though. The man had been preaching with such veracity that the veins in his neck were throbbing. It is possible that my father saved that man’s life. Bless God, he may have croaked preaching the good news. Father sat in the back row, and made sure to give as many “amens” as possible in the remaining five minutes of the sermon. 

“With every head bowed and every eye closed,” The preacher began his prayer. My father didn’t close his eyes. In the front row sat my mother. Her blonde wavy hair spilling over the back of the pew. He hadn’t been in Frog Pond more than a day, but he knew at that moment he found a home, he found his wife. 

Every Sunday he returned to the church, eventually he made a habit of going to the evening service too. It was a good ole’ fashioned southern gospel singing. No preacher, just the acapella sound of songs like I’ll fly away and Victory in Jesus. He couldn’t hold a tune in a bucket, but she was there and that meant he was too. It took a while for him to work up the nerve to speak to her. Every week he would move up a pew, until finally he sat next to her, stuck out his hand and said, 

“My name is Thomas Watson Sanders, and you don’t know this yet, but you will be my wife one day.” If it were any other woman, she would have ran until she reached the Gulf of Mexico, but Mother offered her hand and said, “It’s nice to meet you Mr. Sanders.” 

I ran my fingers along the cracked spine again, tracing the gold that had survived time and handling. Something stirred in me—something warm, something anchored. For the first time, I didn’t feel like a question waiting to be answered. I felt seen. Rooted.

“Can I take it home?” I asked.

“Of course,” she said. “It’s yours. Always has been.”

As I left the classroom with the Bible tucked beneath my arm, the whispers and stares from earlier didn’t feel so heavy anymore. They were just noise. I had something real now. Something that had passed through his hands and now lived in mine. And as I walked into the church house and slipped into the pew beside my mother, she looked down at the Bible and then up at me.

Her eyes filled. She didn’t say a word.

She didn’t have to.

The church though, was not only where my father met my mother for the first time, it was also the place I met him for the first time.