Sunday Potluck

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Years of utilitarian cooking, mixed with cheese laden casseroles and weak coffee, permeated the air of the church fellowship hall. Ladies in starched clothes uncovered white CorningWare.  The shiny aluminum foil protected a menagerie of potluck cooking, all seemingly made with cream of mushroom soup. Grabbing a white, flowered paper plate and plastic cutlery, my sister and I would file in behind people making small talk. The men in suits would converse:

“Good service today, I tell you.”

“Absolutely. How’s Carolyn and the kids?”

“Great. Tim’s starting the church basketball league this fall.”

“Speaking of basketball, how about that Carolina game last night?”

“Oooooh buddy-I tell you, Dean Smith has teams shakin’ in their boots.”

Undoubtedly, the Carolina basketball game would have even made it into the pastor’s sermon that morning. Sitting there, in God and Tarheel country, my sister, Martha, and I would take our seats at a long table with our parents. We’d push the beige food items around our plate and pass the time playing “I spy”. Women fluttered about the room, refilling cups of sweet tea, while golf dates were promised all around by the men folk. Echoing our previous dissent from the morning, we’d ask, “Can we go now?” every 10 minutes, hoping to avoid any congregational meeting or mini-sermon that might again arise.

We used to beg to skip church every Sunday, to no avail. We would literally pray, pulling on our stiff shoes and frilly dresses, that somehow service that day would be cancelled. We would hope that we could run and put on our one-piece bathing suits and convince our parents to let us eat ice cream and hotdogs at the beach and skip the 11am church service and subsequent potluck.

We wanted to be on the fun part of town. The “grown-up” side of Wilmington, the downtown southern genteel part of town, held the historic grand churches, cobblestone streets and antebellum mansions. Downtown meant white tights, combed hair and crisp pink bows. The other side of town meant running as fast as you could and making water-dripped sand castles: Wrightsville Beach. Eating hot dogs from the Trolley Stop shack, and ice cream from The Ice Cream Stand, we had to be dragged away from the beach when the sun finally set.

Watching the big, ticking school clock in the church fellowship hall, we politely answered questions from adults we hardly knew about our age and future career aspirations. Breathing a large exhale when chairs began scooting back, making a chorus of screeches, we ran out to the car as fast as our fancy shoes and mother allowed. Jumping into the backseat, the hot leather made us hold our knees to our chests. Persuasion and pleas ensuing, we could often convince our mom to let us rush home, change, and cart us to the beach. Dropping our plastic buckets, shovels, and beach towels in a heap on the sand, my sister and I raced to the water, bare feet gripping the sand, salt air blowing our hair, glad for another chance to feel free, to run.

text: Nancy Harder/photo: Quyenlan