Reasonable Certitude

By

Miriam Hartman Roberts

(The book within Choices)

Chapter 1

I believe in God. I really do. I believe in God the creator of heaven and earth. After nearly seven complete decades of observation, glorious sunrises and blazing red sunsets, birds and butterflies and a multitude of other magnificent features of this world, including, of course, the miracles of life, birth and the human experience, I am certain of the existence of God the Creator.

Considering God the Creator as a concept, I accept the limitations of the human mind and of language. When describing God the Creator I take no issue with assigning attributes and qualities similar to our own, especially God in human form and the use of the masculine pronouns He, Him and His. Spare me the too cute switch to the feminine pronouns; God as a female. To me God is neither male nor female as we understand gender.

God the Creator I accept and embrace fully and completely. My doubt comes with God the Controller, and it is here where I have solidarity with my atheist friends. I actually have studied this, sitting in church on hundreds of Sundays, listening to explanations of God’s power and will, vengeance and retribution, sin and forgiveness, rewards in heaven and punishment in hell, reading the Bible. I’m no philosopher but I’ve listened and read; I really have. It’s just hard to believe that a God who can make rivers part and volcanoes erupt, who causes death and destruction to prove a point, must resort to threats of eternal damnation to elicit sinless behavior. I can’t accept a God who is said to have omnipotent power allows the greedy to thrive, or lets defenseless children suffer and die of disease and abuse.

I guess I mostly subscribe to the free will pillar of atheism, allowing for that acceptance of God the Creator. God created this world and us, and therefore, we have an obligation to live moral and ethical lives, enjoying the bounties, but sharing with and helping those less fortunate. It’s a choice and we will be rewarded, more or less, appropriately. I guess I accept New Testament Christian benevolence and love, and reject, other than creation, Old Testament rigid dogma of sin and punishment.

Yes, I’ve fully considered that as mere mortals none of us could understand how war and destruction, rape and murder fit into His plan; but I just cannot accept that there is a God whose plan includes these things. I am told I am weak and before I can enjoy the full bounty of His plan, I must believe, unquestionably. But I can’t.

I am, therefore, left without a pure foundation. It does seem there is some force at play beyond my twin beliefs in God the Creator and living a life in tune with Christian benevolent free will. The result for me is something I call Divine Coincidence, or DC. I believe there is a power of some kind but not a God as we typically think; it’s a power, a force really, that gathers the elements of life and its struggles, setting the stage for things to happen, leaving us to discover the reason for the challenges that face each of us. In simplistic terms, I believe that things happen for a reason.

I wasn’t thinking about free-will, God the Controller or even about things happening for a reason in September 1955 when a seemingly minor discovery of mine led me to question so much about my beliefs and choices in life. No, I was probably thinking about how fortunate I was. Don, my husband, and I had finally moved into our own home after 15 years of married life living with my parents on the little farm in Marshall County, West Virginia. It wasn’t really a full working farm; it was my father’s fantasy farm. He was not a farmer but from farming. He kept the little ten acres or so, most of it on steep hills, as his outlet, his connection with his roots. During the week he was a successful salesman for Wheeling Steel Corporation. He was a weekend farmer.

We had finally moved our family, a girl and two boys, to one of the better homes in Moundsville, a red brick Victorian on Fifth Street built by one of the town’s successful elders who died without leaving family who lived in town, or who wanted to. It was a magnificent three story house with four bedrooms and three baths on the second floor, a formal dining room, a sun porch surrounding the turret center of the living room and second and third floor bedrooms, a solarium and notably an elevator, installed by the rich previous owner when he could no longer navigate stairs.

I had given up my dream of becoming a journalist, (I wanted to be an out where things were happening reporter), the dream that was challenged when I married the handsome and thin Donald Roberts in our senior year at WVU, and by the ensuing instantaneous pregnancy that followed. Marriage, a new baby, the Great Depression and a looming threat of war gave us little choice but to live with my mother and father, on that little non-farm for over fourteen years. We never thought it would be so long before we would be on our own. In 1955 I finally felt complete and content. Don was successful; we socialized with doctors, lawyers, and business owners. Our oldest daughter, Brenda Lee, went to a private Catholic girls’ school in Wheeling; our boys, Tim who was thirteen but in a hurry to be older, and Jack who was about to turn ten, were active and happy. Or so I thought.

That September afternoon I was cleaning closets, putting away summer clothes and preparing for colder weather. I had finished in Brenda’s room, our 17 year old daughter who was away at school, and was working on the closet shared by our two sons, 13 year old Tim and little Jack, just ten. I noticed a box of their things we had shoved on a shelf in the back of the closet when we moved in May. I decided to go through the box but when I moved it from the shelf I found a surprise and a mystery. Behind the box, deep on the shelf were girls’ things, my things and Brenda’s; a bra, two pair of panties and a full slip.

My journal shows the following from that day in 1955:

September 8, 1955 – Thursday

I don’t know what is going on. I found something today that concerns me, a lot. I was trying to get caught up on getting the house in order from the chaos of the summer while the kids were back in school. Today I began with the boys’ room. It must have been a mess. There wasn’t much of closet in that room. As with most older homes it isn’t deep but it does go off to the right for three or four feet where there was a shelf. As I was hanging up some of the boys’ clothes I noticed a box on the shelf. We had moved in so quickly I had forgotten I had thrown some older clothes of the boys in a box and just shoved it in the closet. So when I pulled out the box to go through it I noticed some things stuffed behind the box. I was totally shocked as I reached for and touched the items. I don’t know what I was expecting but what I felt wasn’t it. Behind the box was one of my bras, two pair of panties and a slip. How did they get there and WHY!!!!

(I could not tell this story without my journals. It wasn’t my idea, nor was it my nature to record my daily life. It was a requirement imposed by Dr. Perley Reed, my journalism professor for my senior year at WVU. My first entry explains it, I think:

January 6, 1939 – WVU – Morgantown, West Virginia. Professor Reed has mandated that each of us in his Journalism 450 class keep a Journal. The idea as he notes is that a story without detailed facts is fiction and fiction has no place in a respectable newspaper. So we must carry a journal around, and we must carefully record the ‘who, what, where, when and why’ of events we deem newsworthy. So everything I see or experience will be recorded here with the appropriate five ‘W’s’.

That was the first entry and by the end of the semester, when I graduated with a major in journalism, I was making an entry most every day. When Don and I started living with my parents, I continued my journal; it was my escape, my friend. I kept writing for nearly 28 years; with entries more frequent during difficult or momentous times. I stopped writing in 1968 upon the news of the tragic accident that took the life of my eldest son, Tim.)

I sat on one of the twin beds in the boys room holding my and Brenda’s personal things, unmentionables they were called then. I remember almost laughing at first but then having a million thoughts run through my head. How did these things get there? Why? What did it mean? I tried to think it through. Did I inadvertently leave them there? No, that wasn’t it. Needless to say I didn’t get much else done that day. I was an only child and being the mother of boys had its challenges for me but my boys were really o.k. At least I thought so. There were a couple of older boys in town who were obviously different, who were called sissy and who didn’t like girls. I didn’t see that in either Tim or Jack. Tim was as rough as any boy and really liked to challenge and mix it up. He was literally a fighter. Jack was much more reserved and quiet but he played well with other boys and seemed to fit in. He was gentle and sweet but he wasn’t a sissy, or at least I didn’t see it.

So what then? Those things just didn’t get put behind that box by accident. Was this just something boys go through? Had one or both of them been playing some boy game? Nothing really made sense. Tim was probably starting puberty so I guess it could be him thinking about girls. I had no other explanation. I knew that I couldn’t confront them, separately or together. If things happen for a reason, the reason behind this was a complete mystery.

So I did nothing. I removed the items and worried alone. I washed them, they weren’t really dirty, and returned them to their drawers. Over the next few days I considered whether I should tell my husband. Don was a great father, also an only child. He had been pampered as a kid, given everything he wanted. He loved the kids and was close to all of them. He wasn’t the sports role model for the boys but he wasn’t an unloving or absent father either. He was more one of the children rather than a father with tough standards and rigid expectations. I felt if I told him he would want to take some action. He would want to consult someone, and he would insist on finding out who did it and why; he would have to know if one of his boys needed help. It was probably nothing serious. I was probably making too much of it.

I didn’t tell Don, or anybody. I hoped it was a fluke. If I told no one then it was like it didn’t happen and if it didn’t happen, I didn’t have to know the reason, I told myself convolutedly. But I watched Tim and Jack closely. And I checked the closet regularly. I saw nothing that was unusual. Tim was constantly busy with school and playing outside and “inventing” things. Jack showed no unusual behavior. He was doing o.k. in school and with friends. Yes, he had friends, boys, and while he was not the center of a group, he played with one or two boys a couple times a week. He also read a lot and spent a lot of time alone; he seemed so normal.

I just knew this would pass.