Can the boyfriend spend the night? Only under very specific circumstances.
I met Hubby when I was thirteen years old. That fact is a defining characteristic of my life so you will understand that it comes up a lot. I am also a PK (Preacher’s Kid) and that is also a defining characteristic.
My mother is the best Minister’s Wife you could ever know. There are times when I wonder if she was called into ordained ministry, but because of the customs of the time she thought the best she could do was to be a pastor’s wife. Even if that is the case, she was never jealous of the Church or irritated by the notions of people because of her role. In fact, if anyone carried pre-conceived ideas as to what a pastor’s wife should be, my mother had them all. And, she lived up to every single one.
You may have heard that being a pastor’s family is like “living in a fish bowl.” I do think this has gotten better over the years because we learned a few things about psychiatry and boundaries, but it is still hard to grow up in the manse or parsonage next door to the church. I think Mom considered it her God-given duty to “keep up appearances.”
Now, here is the weird thing I want to be sure I explain. Mom is one of the most honest and sincere people you will ever meet. So, she wasn’t about “keeping up appearances” in the way that Hyacinth Bucket (pronounced Bouquet) was on the BBC show of that name. Mom didn’t want to “put on airs,” but she did want to represent the church well and it was our duty as the pastor’s family to do so. Dad was called into ordained ministry and that meant the entire family was too.
I had known Hubby for about two years at the time. The ONLY time we saw each other in person was at church activities — sometimes his church, most of the time, mine. This was because I couldn’t be alone with him because I was too young. (At the time it made me crazy. As a parent now, I wonder how in the world my parents kept their sanity while their baby girl fell in love with someone older WHO COULD DRIVE!)
So, Hubby came to Youth Group a good bit (as a way to see me!) and my youth group planned a trip to Six Flags Over Georgia. It would be a day trip, but it would mean leaving at 4:30am from our church. Hubby lived over thirty minutes away, so I begged my parents to please allow him to stay the night at our house — in my brother’s room which was unoccupied at that time so that he wouldn’t have to get up so early and drive “basically in the middle of the night” to come to our house to meet the church bus to go on the trip.
Most families operate so differently nowadays that it may be difficult to even imagine what a big deal this was. It was a HUGE deal. It took a lot of negotiating, placating, and flat-out begging. I don’t think Mom would have ever agreed to it, but when Daddy gave in, she did too.
I don’t remember if Hubby came early for dinner or just showed up closer to bedtime. I know we had all watched some TV together. The four of us, Hubby and I on the sofa at the back of the Den, Dad in his recliner, Mom in her chair by the fireplace. Then, likely, Dad said, “The ole clock on the wall says It’s time for bed.”
Because I couldn’t go out on dates, Hubby spent a lot of time watching TV with my parents. When the night was getting late, we would go sit on the couch in the Living Room to have a few minutes to be as close to alone as we could be. Dad would stay in his recliner and when he was ready for bed he would announce as loudly as possible, “Well, the ole clock on the wall says It’s time for bed.” If he was particularly grumpy for some reason, he may even say, “It’s time to go home.” Either way, it was clear that it was time for Hubby to leave. I would walk him to the door and we could kiss goodnight as my parents hovered nearby turning off lights and making sure “the boy” was really gone.
So, on this special night, Hubby got to stay over. Mom, being the gracious hostess, had turned down my brother’s bed for him and left towels out for him. She made sure he knew where everything was that he may need and said “Goodnight” to us both watching to make sure that he went into the back bedroom and I went into mine.
My brother and I shared a bathroom. It was small with a stand-up shower. It had a door from my bedroom into it and a door from his bedroom too. I think they are called “Jack and Jill Bathrooms,” but I don’t know. When I was getting ready for bed that night and about to go into MY BATHROOM to brush my teeth, I realized that seemingly inconspicuously placed between me and the bathroom door was a chair. Upon the chair was a pile of clean and folded clothes. Mom had done my laundry for me (I should have been doing my own!) and she had created this barrier between me and Hubby. Now, this barrier was kind of placed at an angle, like it just happened to be there. And, of course, it was just a chair and some clothes, so it was very easily moved out of the way.
I was also locked out of MY BATHROOM. But, this was a poor attempt to keep me out. She had left the door locked and I could have probably just knocked and Hubby would have let me in, but I just used the hair pin that I kept propped up on top of the door frame for this very reason. My brother was notorious for locking me out of the bathroom — probably his way of making sure I didn’t come into his room during his “private time,” but the locks were just those push in and turn door knobs that had a hole in the center. I wasn’t very old when my siblings showed me how to take a hair pin, stretch it out to make an L shape, and stick it into the hole to pick the lock. Which I did so that I could actually brush my teeth, use the toilet, and go to sleep because I had to be up at four-o-clock in the morning to go to Six Flags!
I can remember standing outside the next morning in our yard waiting for everyone to gather for the trip. The sun wasn’t up yet. It was a little bit cool. And, as a surly teenager, I was pissed. “Mom, did you think I wouldn’t notice that you piled clothes on a chair and put it in front of the bathroom door?”
After a moment, she admitted to it, but she did so by saying, “Well, what if there was a FIRE or something and I had to tell the firemen that you and your boyfriend were in those two back bedrooms?!”
Of course I replied, “THAT is what you would be worried about IF there was a FIRE and I was STUCK INSIDE?!”
I’m 90% sure she laughed at the moment because she saw the absurdity of it too. I’m 100% sure we have laughed about it since then.
Church people were coming the next day. There had to be some sort of evidence of a barrier so that there was no question of impropriety. And, always waiting for the next tragedy to strike, she had to have things prepared in case a fire-fighter questioned her judgement in allowing a boy to stay the night in the same house as her teenaged daughter.
