My answering machine on the cell phone was bursting at the seams this morning with not one but two church invites from my relatives and to my great delight, I took on the new day with my pick of the litter of the Baptist churches in the area. It seems that, as my family left for Florida and left me behind, everyone suddenly became convinced I was doomed to become unchurched and rushed to invite me to services.

First Baptist and its on fire preacher was quite tempting, but in the end, I chose Oak Grove, because not only is it my home church, but today was the day of our annual homecoming.

After the uplifting sermon on Father’s Day, we all made like the good Baptists that we are and crammed the fellowship hall doors nearly knocking them off their hinges in an attempt to get to the enormous spread.

I’ve already devoted two posts to my experience at an Episcopalian homecoming, but if I were going to paraphrase a typical Baptist homecoming in one word while comparing it to the one at Old Trinity it would be this: milder.

Okay. Picture it. The scene is set. All the players are in place along with a few extras who are suffering from grumbling tummies. The tables (all good Baptists put two extra long tables together so that it’s impossible to get all you want from one side and you must go down the other side too) pulsate with barbecue flanked by second in command, fried chicken, and followed by a bloated battalion of five kinds of green bean casseroles, hash brown casseroles, raisin salads, an assortment of garden veggies drowning in bacon fat, chicken and dumplings (in the crock pot and not in the crock pot) and a whole other table of cakes, cookies and fried pies and a whole other table of drinks (sorry, Episcopals, no cooler of alcohol here).

Conversations are much cooler as no one’s gotten silly off the wine (a downer I must say) and then the inevitable happens and I’m questioned to death about why I might have killed off the other members of my family and where in the world are they and what I planned on doing with my life. Calmly and sarcastically, I answered each one while shoveling Mt. Dew into my mouth and getting silly off caffeine as a substitute for the hard stuff.

And then it happened. In mid sentence of catching up with my kindergarten Sunday School teacher, the urge to go to the bathroom (thanks to the Dew) had me up and pushing myself through the crowd to the trusty old wood panel-walled restroom. The same one that had been there ever since I spit up split peas in the nursery, graduated into the big kids class and one day mysteriously found myself in with the 18-30 year olds.

Everything else in the church had undergone a renovation at some point. The sanctuary had received new carpet to replace the day-glo ’80s looking garb I’d grown up with. The pews had been repadded. The nursery and Sunday School rooms had been revamped.

Ye olden water closet had been the only thing to remain untouched.

Until today.

Opening up the door to the women’s restroom, I did a double take, a triple take and nearly wet myself before I could walk the final two steps to the toilet. Gone was the wood paneling. Gone were the wooden partitions. Gone was the mirror and sink, the plastic Dixie cups, the pictures of faded and dusty daffodils……replaced with white painted walls, a decidedly modernistic off-white tile floor, purply pictures of grapes and flowers on the walls behind double toilets (with partitions gone, so the people can watch each other go at it, I suppose) and an overall cold feeling. After 25 years, the bathroom had received a facelift and I immediately forgot the food as I gazed in wonder at the last piece of my childhood church memories gone, well, down the toilet.

So, now, for next year‘s homecoming, I must suggest…..If my fellow Baptists are going to completely revitalize and modernize the bathroom that worked perfectly fine for all my 25 years of living…..might as well add in the wine!