CALL THE SOCIAL WORKER-But the Answer is No [Su, 5-17-20]

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith & Life for the Years of Winter

CALL THE SOCIAL WORKER-But the Answer is No [Su, 5-17-20]

Helen says I have been quarantined too long, for I am now a fan of a soap opera. I don’t think of “Call the Midwife,” on PBS, as a soap opera, although I guess it is. And watching babies being born is not my favorite activity. But the answer is yes: I’m a soap fan.

Birthing babies is no problem to Helen. She’s been there, done that. When she learned that Alan Hatfield, my oncologist, was going to implant a Groshong catheter in my chest, she told the nurses that she was going to come along to watch. They said, doubtfully, “Are you a nurse?” “No,” said Helen, “but I’m a home ec teacher and show birth films in my class.” “Oh,” nurse Olivia said, “if you can watch birth films, you can watch anything. Come ahead.” [To be honest, Helen later said, “At the point that Olivia looked away, I figured if she didn’t want to see it, I didn’t, either.”]

Helen used to watch those medical shows while we ate supper, the ones that show abdominal surgery while you’re eating spaghetti. She learned a lot of medical stuff. I learned that it’s possible to eat spaghetti with eyes closed.

We no longer get that channel. I felt that we had to change providers, one that did not have The Gory Operation Channel, in order to get more baseball games. More baseball didn’t work out, but at least we don’t see any more surgeries.

I watch “Midwife” because the early 1960s neighborhood of Poplar in London is almost an exact replica of the late 1950s neighborhood of Pilsen, in Chicago, where I worked, and Nonnatus House, where the “Midwife” nuns and nurses live, is a replica of Howell House, where I lived, except the Nonnatus folks are Catholic nurses, and the Howell folks were Presbyterian social workers.

Like Poplar, Pilsen back then was mostly white--remnants of the earlier Bohemian [Czech] immigrants, newly arriving Appalachians—with a few blacks and Hispanics. Like Nonnatus, the Howell staff was white, except for Carolyn Williams, who was black, like the one black nurse at Nonnatus, Lucille Anderson. The male medical interns at Nonnatus have the role that we college student interns—including two from Germany who already had their degrees-- had at Howell, learning the ropes, and exasperating the older, professional social workers. For us interns, Rev. Don Nead, the pastor of Howell Presbyterian Church, a part of Howell House, and Sid Denham, head social worker, were the equivalent of Dr. Patrick Turner and Sister Julienne, of Nonnatus.

Also, I’m in love with Nurse Valerie Dyer, because that hair-do reminds me of all the girls who lived at Howell House then. I was in love with them, too.

So much so that I would “cook” for them on Sunday, trying to impress them. I would arise early, preach at Wycliffe Methodist, the first English-speaking preacher at that old Bohemian church, and then preach at the Halstead Street Institutional Methodist Church, which was a combination church and settlement house, like Howell, except much bigger, wonderful facilities, but it had been cut off from its neighborhood by the new interstate, so only a few worshippers left. [1]

Then I would hurry home to heat up lunch. We had a cook, but she had weekends off. She would whip up lots of stuff on Friday and leave it for us to manage on the weekends. A different shelf in the fridge for each meal. For Sunday, it was usually good stuff, like pot roast.

It was really easy for my colleagues to go to church, but they didn’t. I was the only Methodist, so I didn’t expect them to go to church with me. But all they had to do was walk down from the third floor to the first, where Howell Presbyterian Church worshipped in the big room with the stage. In those days, though, you had to clean up and put on church clothes to go to church, and that was just too much. They were all still in bed when I got back and started “cooking.” [No microwaves or toaster ovens.]

When Marian and Nancy and Barbara and Shirley and Connie and Carolyn and Sigrid and Karel and Randy and Dan smelled the food heating up, they would wander down the halls in various stages of dishevelment and plop down at our long dining room table and dig in. My attempt to impress them worked, to the extent that all the girls, and guys, said they appreciated it.

It worked in another way, too. I was trying to answer two questions then. One was: Could I be an inner-city pastor? The answer was “No.” I thought that because I had grown up poor on a farm, I could relate to poor people in the city, but rural poverty is very different from urban poverty. The other question: Could I fall in love with somebody besides Helen? The answer to that was also “No.” I could be “in love” with all the girls, but love only that one.

Sometimes the best answer is “No.”

“Midwife” is on tonight. If you call and say, “Do you have time to talk?” the answer is “No.”

John Robert McFarland

1] I don’t know for sure, but I was probably the last preacher at both those churches. The District Superintendent would have closed them already, except that this gullible preacher boy from the hills of Indiana came along and was willing to give it a try. The DS figured he didn’t have much to lose.