Chapter Two from Melissa Comes Home by Mildred Krentel

And somehow the “hurts” seemed all the greater because for the first eighteen years of our marriage we had lived in a cotton-padded world with marshmallow corners.

All during the war we were handsomely quartered at the Naval Proving Grounds in Virginia. We were totally grateful to be together. So many of our friends had been separated, wives returning home to mother.  Somehow I felt guilty. 

Two sons and four years later, we were civilians again and buying our first home with Paul's mustering out pay  as a modest down payment. He had no difficulty finding a position in his chosen field. We settled down to relative normality when suddenly, after six months of chemical research, his company asked him to go back to school to get his masters degree, at their expense. 

So, we pulled up stakes and moved to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania where our first daughter Diane was born.  With a Herculean effort, Paul applied himself to graduate studies over the babbles of two lively boys and one baby girl and one demanding life. One year zoomed by. 

We called for the moving van again and trekked back to New Jersey and the research laboratory. Not for long was Paul content with the confinement of the nine-to-five routine.  It took little persuasion to convince him to join the sales and marketing efforts of the corporation. This was scarcely three months after he had received his Masters degree in organic chemistry from Lehigh University. 

He was a natural---disposition,orientated to people, open face, honest gray green eyes, and a quick enthusiastic smile. It was small wonder that two years later he was asked to organize and manage a new district sales office in North Carolina. 

And off we went----happy as gypsies---- to acquire a four bedroom home, a year old boxer, and a somewhat dilapidated southern accent that David, Bob and Diane quickly imitated. Fortunately our year old Steve was just beginning to talk, so he at least could sport a genuine drawl. 

I loved every single thing about Greensboro-- her people, her natural rolling hillside, and her tailor made suburban charms. The abounding warmth and hospitality we encountered at every turn soon filled our calendar with dinner, picnic and barbecue invitations. 

Even housewifery and motherhood were a pleasure with the wealth of household help available. I had ample leisure time for teaching Bible clubs, Sunday school, and release time in public schools. 

One late afternoon, two members of the local child evangelism committee in the city came to pay a visit. 

“You're familiar with our Sunday television program?” I nodded vaguely; I had remembered hearing about it. 

“ We need a storyteller! 

“Me on TV?” I was incredulous. 

Even my husband was aghast. “Why you can't stand still for a snapshot.” 

It was true.

 But I finally agreed to at least try. 

The first Sunday found me sitting on the floor in the television station with my shoeless feet tucked under me. Three wide-eyed children, mesmerized by the camera the lights and the hushed commands from the camera men, were grouped around me. 

Assignment; keep their interest. 

I grimaced, I screwed my face into countless contortions I raised and lowered my eyebrows, I whispered, I laughed and I shouted. The cameras had a field day.

For over three years, we ran the gamut of puppet shows,  flannelgraph and dramatic portrayals, using children, pets and miniature models.  And when the imaginative boneyard was barren, there was always a book to read with the camera zooming in on the illustrations.

But good Bible story books with exciting illustrations were hard to find. They were dull and ponderous and hopelessly behind the times.

And more and more of the kids I was acquainted with did not seem to know whether Noah had built the ark or was mangled in the lion’s den.

I decided  I would write a book.  I started with the story of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego and it began to come out in jingle:

Then a torrent broke loose----

NEBUCHADNEZZAR WAS FURIOUS!

His face changed its color

( a sight rather curious);

HE SPOKE

( and his voice was as dry as a blotter),

“Heat that old furnace just SEVEN TIMES HOTTER.”

Why not do Bible stories in rhyme? I thought. 

“As long as you don’t get sacrilegious!” I was warned piously by my would-be critics.

No sooner had I lined up an artist to do the illustrations  (not realizing that most publishers like to take on the responsibility themselves) than off he sailed to South America with his family for a five-year missionary term.  I was crushed.

But few people are irreplaceable.  And I was soon in touch with a New York illustrator.  He agreed to take on the dubious honor of drawing cartoon-like characters for I See 4.

Our five years in North Carolina were all too brief.  Paul was asked to assume new responsibilities as manager of a new chemical division in New York.  Again all our belongings were stashed on a moving van.  There were four two wheelers strapped onto the tailgate this time. 

We settled in one of New York’s “bedrooms”--a suburb called Glen Rock in northern New Jersey.  A middle-aged Dutch Colonial on a tree-arched street was picked for our domicile.  Again we laid wall-to-wall carpeting.  (It was our secret weapon against instant insanity in our noisy world of children.)  We picked up the threads of our lives again, met new people, and began to involve ourselves in an independent church in Hawthorne.

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I will not soon forget the blonde, willowy neighbor who lived directly across the street from me in Glen Rock.  She had more bounce than most ping-pong balls and effervesced from the moment she “ding donged” her way into my living room.

But one morning, as she rattled on the great length with high enthusiasm, I sensed a need in her.  I wondered at myself that I  had not noticed it before.  Why, she needed to know the One whom I had known for such a very long time--the Lord Jesus!  But I panicked.  My tongue flew to the roof of my mouth and clung tenaciously. I could talk to children about God, but this was a grown woman, an adult who most assuredly would mock me.  I backed off a bit.  

You really didn’t have that in mind, did You, God?  I asked mentally.

It seemed He did, for my inner conviction to communicate with her made me more and more miserable.  

I opened my mouth and stammered, “Alice, I want to share something with you.”

Then I sank back into a wretched silence.  I had committed myself.  Alice looked at me with her pert blue eyes narrowed ever so slightly, her eyebrows arched into twin questions marks.  She was waiting.  I felt for sure that she expected me to tell her I was in love with a two-headed monster, or that my husband was going to the moon, or that I was going to have another baby.

When I finally blurted out rather lamely what God meant to me, she looked at me with a dazed expression on her old-young face. 

“Miggy,” she said,  “I don’t blame you for loving your God. He has given you one fantastic, sweet deal.  You’ve got a husband who adores you, four healthy children, and a nice home to live in with no creditors breathing down your back.  But God must have dealt me a fistful of life out of another deck.  My husband is having an affair with a girl who is only a year  older than our sone, Bill.  All three of them are over in the house right now, and I have to go home and cook supper for them  Why, for two months he hasn’t given me money to live on or to pay our mortgage and I have borrowed until I can borrow no more  And, just as a note of interest, this is his sixth affair in our nineteen years of marriage. Now, how do you like that?”

I was rocked right back on my spiritual heels.  How could I tell her that I would love God no matter what troubles or trials He sent my way?

After she left, I began to wonder about God and His dealings with me and our family.  Was it that He could not trust us with anything other than happiness?  Was I not a fit vessel for sorrow or grief?

I tried again many times to talk about God with Alice, but it was a closed subject.  I had had no experience in the vale of tears and I could not communicate with her.  I was a holy “innocent,” unsullied by the world, and unacquainted with grief.  As far as she was concerned, there was no middle ground.  My God was unfair, handing out good to some and evil to others.

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I found myself headed for a new career as a school-bus drover!  My school bus, however, was an ignominious bilious-green Volkswagen.  I felt completely and intimately involved with the warp and woof of this funny square vehicle that I managed to maneuver so inexpertly.  I wanted to protect him.

Monstrous yellow school buses zoomed by us at break-your-neck speed on the highway to and from the Hackensack Christian Day School that our children attended.  I was properly indignant when they fumed carbon monoxide in our faces as they passed us.  I even felt hurt when we couldn’t keep up with these “big boys” on the hills.  I could almost imagine the VW bus saying”

Ach yah, Ich been new here! I’m chust now imported!

From over the seas on a big boat transported!

My name is Volkswagen, but if that should trouble you,

You children can simply say, “Mr. VW.”

And suddenly even this routine task seemed more palatable! Life held so much that was worth communicating about to someone.  Maybe I should write---but my besetting sin was procrastination, and it was three years later that my first picture storybook was published.  I was thrilled to the core when my trembling fingers caressed at last the bright red cover of my book, vI See 4 by Mildred Krentel.  My name in print!  It was unbelievable!

That was the summer when Paul decided that working for the same company fourteen years was long enough and that, before he added to his thirty-nine years, he should investigate what opportunities were available to a man with his experience.  

And that was the summer I discovered that there was going to be another baby in the Krentel household. 

That fall, we moved to southern New Jersey to a suburb called Middletown where Paul assumed the challenge of director of marketing for a small chemical company nearby.