Going Back To Your Childhood Church

Tiny orange tea lights with miniature pumpkins sprinkle love lights around the tables, Which have been set probably since 5:30 a.m. with the church’s best china, Because the fall tea starts at ten. Small plastic corn cobs and toy cornucopias were Placed ever so gently, by church ladies who were young when I was a child, But are in their eighties and nineties now, I hear them in the kitchen bossing each other and I smile. It has been forty-five years since I attended this church. Their faces are the same, except a bit older, their hair a different color, but the same smiles. They all know me. I know most of them. Eleven round tables set up by six church ladies are generously sprinkled with orange, and yellow confetti I can hear them tittering about something they think is insanely funny. Probably making fun of a man. That is when they laugh the hardest. A hand printed place card with a tiny brown turkey – Sorted in eights, are placed on the crisp white table cloths I know, because I was instructed to place them. One of the church ladies comes out, and replaces them all, smiling At me, as if I am too young to get it right. I am only a kid, you understand, merely sixty-something-years-young. What would I know about placing place cards correctly? I go into the kitchen to see if there is anything they will let me do. They trust me to clean the sink. No. Wait. One comes over to show me The correct way to do it. They are a riot.