[Previous entry: "Roses In December"] [Next entry: "Oratorio Sunday"]

12/04/2004: "Alto"

I return to Hamlet, Revenge! for the name I am giving to the person I will talk about today. Elizabeth Crispin has been my friend since I joined the church six years ago. We might have been friends far longer if we had only known one another; she is just enough younger than me that we missed being in school together, and her family lived, during those years, down the block from my mother's best friend. Her mother, Anne, now lives just up the street from Agnes and her family in Bernardsville; she taught Latin and worked at the town hall. She was crippled a few years ago when she was run over by her own car but is cheerful and active in the church choirs and fellowship events. Elizabeth sings in the choir, teaches Sunday School, serves on the Children's Education committee, and handled the cash registers at the Mission Market. She has a husband no one ever sees and a daughter I have seen grow up, from a babe in arms to a bright, active, mischievous, dramatic child of six. I'll all her Stella. I wish I could show Elizabeth to the people who think all Christians are the same: joyless, meddlesome, judgmental, scary. she has sparkling blue eyes, a wicked and irreverant sense of humor, an open and inquisitive mind, an easy and comfortable manner with others, and a healthy sense of her own ridiculousness. Every year about this time our paths converge, and I am sure that as others see us continually in one another's company, our intuitive comradeship, our familiarity, they may wonder. Wonder no more: we are yokefellows, pulling in the same direction, leaving the possibility of new growth behind.