February 2: Memories of Orion

I think I've mentioned before that I grew up in Pomeroy as a PK (preacher’s kid). After my parent’s divorced (I was 5), my mom married a man named Oliver. We spent a short six months in Cedar Falls once they were married so that he could attend seminary there to become a Methodist minister (he had been a UCC one). His first church assignment was to Pomeroy and thus we moved there when I was half-way through first grade.

Growing up in a parsonage is an odd experience. You don’t own the home. You have to care for it like a renter would, with church members doing walkthroughs to insure all is well. I remember not being allowed to put nails in the walls, and so taping posters everywhere. I had Duran Duran wallpaper. It was gorgeous.

I have many memories associated with being a PK that are incredibly warm. Oliver preached at 3 churches, including a country parish (Zion), a church in Jolley, and the Pomeroy church which was next to the parsonage. The people that inhabited my world because of this connection were loving, warm, caring souls. We had very little money, and I remember them giving us wood to burn in our stove (seriously), used clothing, and copious amounts of baked goods. I had adopted grandparents that for a little girl desperately missing her grams and gramps were heaven. I will share more about those memories sometime this year, I'm sure.

What brought me back to the Pomeroy church last night was Orion. I dropped Aria off at a friend’s yesterday evening. When I got home, I spent a good half hour freezing in my driveway. I couldn’t take my eyes off the night sky.

I have been in love with the constellations, with Orion particularly, since I was a kid. There was this evergreen conical shaped bush along the church that had a perfect nesting space within it. I used to spend hours in there. I read books in the summer. I wrote (bad) poems there in my pre-teen angst. In the winters, I’d sneak out with a blanket to hide amongst the boughs of the tree and look up at Orion.

As only youth can tell it, I had a story about Orion. I dreamt of a galaxy, a whole separate world that existed on Orion’s belt. I’m not alone in these fancies. There is much lore about that belt.

“..those three stars of the airy Giant's zone,
That glitter burnished by the frosty dark” – Alfred, Lord Tennyson

In my dream, that world up there was where I belonged. I so often felt misplaced in my childhood. Ours was the only family with divorced parents in my school. I remember educating classmates on step- versus half-siblings. On the myth that was my dad they never met but heard about often. I thought differently than others. I was never home in my home. I can’t well vocalize what made me feel that I did not belong to this earth. I just knew I didn't.

I used to stare up at that belt and wish and pray that I could go to a home my heart could feel home within. Be centered and loved and the person I was meant to be. I’d give my prayers to the night sky, and then my human body would betray me in the cold and I’d have to go back inside.

The Pomeroy church was torn down a few years ago. I went back in 2008 (I hadn't been there since 1990 when a friend and I drove a VW bug from Belle Plaine so I could show her from whence I came). 

The church was still standing then, but my bush was gone. I felt its loss. Orion and his belt still remain, though, as do the memories made under those boughs.

This song invokes that little girl hiding in a bush in the bitter cold. Praying to feel home.

Prince - The Arms of Orion