Zion

​​I had seen the church often on the way to the university when I visited my daughter while she was a student.

Photo by Jacob Barlow

What did I do after I heard the black-capped chickadees calling to each other? After I’d opened the door to the woman in the black-satin hot pants, and we’d both realized we were in the wrong scene of the movie of our lives? After I’d cried and begged God to get me out of the mess I’d gotten myself into?

I cleaned.

I made the bed, pulling the comforter neatly over the mattress and arranging the pillows just so. It was my daughter’s mattress and bedding, because she would soon be taking my place at Elizabeth House, and unlike me, she would stay. I was planning to head back to Boise the next day and would spend the next several weeks making the final arrangements to move. As I looked at the white comforter and neatly stacked pillows, the bright morning sun spilled across them, and the room looked almost inviting.

I’d cleaned the master bath the day before, but it was impossible to tell. The granite countertop was still sticky with hairspray, the shower still smelled despite the bleach I’d sprayed on the tile.

So I worked in the kitchen, wiping out the drawers and cupboards, collecting a few odds and ends left by the previous owner and putting them in a giveaway box. I found a tiny baby sock in one of the drawers of the built-in desk on the landing, and I left it there. I cleaned the inside of the windows, which is how I discovered that six of them were broken—either they would not latch or they would not stay open. I took pictures of every gouge, every crack, every hole in Elizabeth House. When I returned to Boise I’d submit them to the property management company. And I’d make a request to have the windows fixed, the gutters cleaned (a thistle sprang straight out of a corner of the roof), and the rotting fence post fixed.

The carpets downstairs were sopping because of all the water and disinfectant Esaiah had used to get the stains out. I took my socks and shoes off to walk across the family room and worked on cleaning the small bathroom that would be my daughter’s. There were red marks on the cupboard, like a child had taken a tube of lipstick and drawn on it, but lipstick would have come off and this did not, despite all the scrubbing I did. I cleaned the mirror and the medicine cabinet, wiped out the cupboard, and scrubbed her shower and tub, including the shower curtain bar which was covered in rust. There was no shower curtain, we’d have to buy that later. Inside the light fixture above the shower were a series of small, brown bodies. I did not know how to remove the light fixture, and I could not face what I would find there, so I left it alone.

That night for dinner I ate snacks while standing on the landing because there was no place to sit. I listened to the neighbors across the alley have a party—a barbecue. I thought they might be college students, since so many of the houses were rentals. I listened to them for a long time. Someone mentioned something about a baby, but I didn’t hear the response.

Afterwards, when the sun had set, when I could no longer distract myself by cleaning, I had to face my incredible loneliness. Not just being alone, but the deeper loneliness and sadness of going through life alone. I wished so badly for someone who cared I had plunged myself into a new city and taken on a huge financial obligation, only to discover my dream of a new beginning had begun with the nightmare of Elizabeth House.

I sank down on the tile of the kitchen floor and called my friend Alex who listened and tried to find a silver lining. When I convinced her there was none, she said gently, “Susan, your friends are here for you if you need us.”

When I woke Sunday morning, I had only one room left to clean, the downstairs laundry room, and I had been dreading it. It was tiny, the size of a closet, and the washer and dryer were squeezed into it, with not even an inch to spare between them or the wall. Given what I’d already seen of Elizabeth House, I wanted to move the heavy machines to clean the accumulated dirt and who knows what else beneath them. But when I moved the dryer even just a tiny amount, the vent hose came loose from the wall—my worst fear. After some finagling, I got the hose re-attached. I did the best I could to clean around both machines, discovering several pennies, a crumbled dollar bill, more socks, grime, and inside the washing machine, which smelled like mildewy rubber and something even less pleasant, I found a magnet that had attached itself to the drum. I wondered how many cycles it had been there, going round and round with the laundry.

When I had cleaned the room as well as I could, I showered and packed. There was one more thing I was going to do before the five-hour drive back to Boise.

I had seen the church often on the way to the university when I visited my daughter while she was a student. The church itself was shaped like a massive upside-down ship, painted blue, and it had a tall, skinny bell tower, also blue, with a tiny replica of the church at the top. There were a couple of Lutheran churches in Salt Lake I planned to try out, and this was the first. It was called Zion.

As I walked to the entrance, a man named Steve introduced himself and his wife and held the door open for me. He invited me to stay for coffee hour afterwards. Inside, the church had a mid-century vibe—Sputnik chandeliers hung throughout the chapel and pink fieldstone decorated the chancel. I had spent the last 25 years living in a mid-century home, and I felt, well, at home. During coffee hour, people approached and visited with me. I shared with one of them I was hoping to improve the shabby cupboards in my rental, and he suggested I talk to Tony, who was a handy carpenter. As I was leaving, I met a man outside on the steps wearing a Panama hat. He had white hair that reached his collar and was lifting his face to the sunshine. It turned out this was Tony, and his wife’s name was Susan, like mine.

We talked for a few minutes. He commented on how stressful moving could be. He told me not to worry about the cupboards—it was a rental. Then he resumed lifting his face to the sun. Later, I would learn he was a retired pastor and an actor, as well as a carpenter.

I treated myself to a coffee for the long drive home, my head full of thoughts now that I knew where I’d spend the next year of my life. Strangely, I no longer felt panic. I knew the next year would be hard, but at the very least, I had a church that felt like home.

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Dear Reader, have you ever landed in a strange place that felt completely foreign, and then something or someone made it feel less so? Please share in the comments if you’d like, and I’ll respond.