Then they’d all have walked on and stood on the path with their backs turned, and I would have turned my back and tried to kind of spread my pee out so it wouldn’t puddle and make a splashing sound and attract attention. Once I had let it puddle and splash, and when we all started off together afterward, Rachael whispered to me, “You sounded like a horse going to the bathroom!” Then she giggled and ran up the path before I could say anything back. I couldn’t yell after her because Mom would have got mad if I’d shouted, “At least I don’t have to squat down and try and hold my underpants out of the way so I don’t soak myself like you!”

When Dad and I were alone, we peed and we never turned our backs and we even gave each other helpful advice like, “I would go on the other side of the path. Don’t want to pee into the wind.” Then we’d laugh and pretty soon after that we’d talk about the girls and Mom and other family stuff. Dad might tell me he was really ashamed of his temper. And now when he talked, I didn’t get embarrassed because it was like Dad wasn’t my dad, but just a friend.

So I told him how I got embarrassed at Mom’s long prayers at the table in the pensione. And he asked me if I could keep a secret, and I said “Yes,” then he said, “I do too.” And I said, “You do?” Dad nodded his head. “Yup.” Then he really surprised me. “Sometimes I envy those Roman Catholics, they just have to cross themselves before they eat.” Then he laughed. That surprised me a lot because Dad usually talked about how dark and superstitious they were. But when we talked about the Roman Catholics when Mom wasn’t there, Dad seemed to like them better. Maybe that was because Mom had been brought up in a missionary home and Dad had been converted pretty late in life from the working class. Like Mom said, Dad hadn’t been raised in a godly atmosphere like she had. His mom was a foul-mouthed hardbitten un-believer even to this day, Mom said.

I got the idea that maybe I wasn’t the only one in our family who got a little tired of always having to witness to everyone and all. So I asked Dad if he ever was embarrassed to stick up for Jesus like he should. And he said he used to be, but as the years had passed he had learned to get used to it and to being “called out from among them” and to always being different from everyone else and a Bible-believing Christian and all.