Most of the things I remember from when I was six had to do with simple suburban life: the driveway, the backyard, the field along the side yard, the woods behind house. My brothers and I were always told "go outside and play," and so we did. We rode bicycles, tricycles, and scooters up and down the driveway. Then there was a basketball to bounce. Lots of running around and a version of backyard tag that we called "monster." My world was quite clear and contained. Brothers to keep up with, yellow dandelions at the end of the driveway, the field full of butcher's broom bushes, milkweed pods, ugly sumac trees here, a grove of pine trees in the woods by the creek. All I remember was the game, except church on Sunday. Except the times I remember when my mother would quickly take off our play clothes and say "put on something respectful, let's go out." It couldn't have been easy to wash her five children, her husband and her deaf mother, DRAFT Essay no. 6 family storyHughes 1dressed, organized and loaded into the station wagon for one of these trips. Anyway he got organized and we would leave. When we went out, it almost always had to do with something for the church. My father was a Presbyterian minister for something called “New Church Development.” This meant that in 1961 he left an elegant church in a big city to go to the edge of a new suburb to start a new one. We met in the basement of one of the subdivision homes. The "sanctuary" had a linoleum floor, folding metal chairs for pews, and a picnic table for an altar. The only thing that made it feel like a church, perhaps, were the prayers, songs and amens. My father's church had Sunday services as all Christian churches do. He read the Scriptures and preached… half the paper… to discourage any future of such “public inconveniences” in his city. A group of black and white Christians praying against racial injustice on a street corner… I wish our world had more “public disruptions” like this. I was four or five years old, I think, when all this happened. Every memory I have is mixed up with the story my father told. Mostly I remember a day-long party, the taste of those delicious lady butterscotches, and how warm she was when she let me sit on her lap. Only as an adult did I slowly become aware of how brave all those Christians must have been to do such a thing in 1965. Only as an adult can I begin to understand how afraid those Pittsford police officers must have been, and how no one else, DRAFT Essay #6 family storyHughes 4not one of them, not a single soul, really understood what in heaven's name we could have done. [1,269 words