The sign outside the church said, “Tiddlywinks: Stories, biscuits and play. All are welcome.” My atheist mum said, “Why don’t you go along? Churchy people are nice.” So on a cold day in Autumn, I load up the double decker buggy with my colicky five month old son, two year old daughter, and the myriad of other items you can’t leave the house without when you’ve got young children. Nappies, wipes, change of clothes, bibs, teething ring, small selection of toys, sippy cup, purse, keys, phone, my eldest’s school book bag and lunch box. Note to self: do not forget toddler’s current favourite handbag and her collection of Disney Princess books! I grab them in the nick of time, and she happily stuffs them down the inside of the buggy’s cosy toes, grinning at me because I remembered without her asking. Underneath her in the buggy, her baby brother, encased in a white snowsuit with his limbs sticking out like Maggie Simpson, screams implacably on and on. It’s a regular morning on a school day.
I walk to the church after dropping my older daughter off at school, tired, frazzled, stressed out, a nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach, because I’ve not been to any toddler groups since having my third baby. He cries pretty much all of the time, and this makes me not want to be around others in case his noise disrupts them. I’m embarrassed and disempowered by my inability to stop him from screaming. The only thing which ceases it, albeit temporarily, is breast feeding him, and if I do that at a new group, I can’t keep an eye on my toddler. She’s shy and reserved and needs my support to help her interact with others and make friends. Being stuck in the house all the time with her screaming baby brother, is obviously doing nothing to help this situation. Basically, all three of us are miserable.
A kind, older woman greets us at the door, which opens out into the worship space. It’s an odd building for a church, built in a square formation. Pews line three of the walls and the altar is in the centre. Our greeter is delighted to see us, as if our arrival is the best thing that’s happened to her all day. She writes our names on stickers and my daughter is thrilled to put hers on the front of her pinafore. “What a beautiful name!” the lady says to her, and my little girl beams with pride. I’m chuffed too, because my sticker says Jayne and not Mum. I am me again, a person in my own right, a separate entity from my children, instead of a being whose identity has become entirely enmeshed with theirs, as if I still carried them inside my womb. In that place, from the very first moment, we are known by name, foregrounding the deeper knowing which would come.
We’re invited to sit in a semi circle at the foot of the altar. Every child goes off to select a kneeler. The brightest coloured ones are hotly contested and fought over. My daughter loves everything red, and so she chooses the one covered with poppies, a Remembrance Day kneeler made by a mother’s union member some time in the 1980s. She carries it back to the semi circle and daintily perches on it, neatly straightening her skirt. We face the vicar, who sits cross legged in front of the altar, an intriguing box in front of her, that’s prompting much excitement from some of the regulars, who are trying to open it.
“Not yet,” the vicar lightly admonishes. “What comes first?”
“We light the candle,” answers a baby-bird voice. This little boy’s reward for answering correctly is that he gets to blow out the match, a very exciting event which is also passionately sought after. The other children are mollified with promises that they’ll get to blow out the candle instead.
Smoke swirls up into the air and disappears into the wooden rafters of the roof. Light shines down from the high windows above our heads, illuminating dust motes in the fragrant air.
“It smells like Cheesus,” a little girl says, pinching her tiny snub nose and grinning at her mother. Jesus smells like candles and smoke. Like dusty old kneelers. Like crayons and floor polish.
With the candle lit, we can now begin. We start with the Tiddlywinks theme tune, which every child knows and can enthusiastically perform all the actions to.
“My God is so big!” (Arms spread wide)
“So strong and so mighty!”(We flex our non existent muscles in a strong man pose.)
“There’s nothing that he cannot do!” (We wag our fingers at one another.)
After we’ve sung a couple of verses about the rivers and the mountains being his, we end on a finale of “there’s nothing that he cannot do…for you, and you, and you!” Each child is included in the chorus of you’s, including my little girl, who is strangely thrilled and then overawed by it all. She grins and then buries her head in my lap, suddenly shy after the unaccustomed attention from strangers.
Next up is a bible story, and I wonder how this will work because tiny toddlers and babies struggle to sit still. Indeed, some of them wander off, making forts with the kneelers, or running around the sanctuary, darting between the pews and clambering over railings. The vicar is endlessly patient and nobody else seems to mind.
The very exciting box is opened to reveal Playmobil figures. These are taken out and set up with an assortment of other items. There is a yellow mat and some trees. A rock. A ladder. A figure with a beard.
“Once upon a time, there was a man called Jacob,” the vicar begins, waving the figure’s claw hand at the toddlers, who giggle and wave back. We settle in for the story, all except one boy who keeps trying to grab Jacob and has to be pacified by being given another figure to distract him. It’s a story about a rock for a pillow and a dream of a stairway to angels and promises. I imagine that Jacob ate some bad cheese before bed, or something.
Afterwards, we go through to the church hall, where little tables are set up with tiny plastic chairs. Colouring sheets depicting a cute and cartoonish Jacob are set out with a giant tub of shiny wax crayons, mottled with multicolours from many years of rubbing up against one another in the crayon box. There’s every colour available, but predictably my daughter chooses red to colour in everything. (Somewhere, in a box in my house, I have dozens of colouring sheets and pictures created by her. They’re all red.) Now there is juice for the children and tea and coffee for the mums. A plate of biscuits gets passed round, which is a cause of much delight from the toddlers. One of the regulars is helping put out a baby mat and some toys, over in the corner. Mums are finding seats to chat with one another as the children colour, or investigate the building blocks or cars.
I sit with a woman who like me has a baby boy and a toddler girl. We know one another vaguely, as we went to the same school, an occurrence which happens regularly when you still live in the town where you were born and raised. I love her pretty much on sight, drawn to her vivacity and charm like a bee to an exotic flower. She’s beautiful and wildly extrovert, chatting with everyone, caring for everyone. Everyone loves her. It’s obvious at once that she’s a woman of deep, profound faith, because she speaks freely about God and Jesus and Mary, as if these are real people to her, and not just characters in a story told to entertain toddlers. I don’t understand this at all. She’s intelligent and socially adept. She’s funny and down to earth. She seems to be…normal. How can she believe that this is real? I remember the words of the Playmobil Jacob when he woke from his crazy dream, as spoken by the vicar: “Surely God is in this place, and I didn’t even know it!” I feel the echo of those words resonate somewhere deep inside, and an unknown part of me, a part I didn’t even know existed, stirs and comes alive. My baby son sleeps through it all.
We gathered. We sang. We listened to the gospel. We prayed. We were included. We were known by name and we were cared for. We shared food and drink together. We were church. It was simple, unpretentious, and uncomplicated, and it opened the door of my heart to the presence of God. The essentials of Christian faith; hospitality and welcome, kindness and acceptance, unconditional loving service, with no pressing desire to convert or persuade, but just because. The biscuits were mid and the coffee was dreadful, but in my memory it tastes better than a freshly ground mug of roasted arabica beans, because it was made by someone else who would hold my baby for me whilst I drank it. I went every single week for the next few years, after the birth of another baby, and still, when that baby was the toddler playing with the cars on the mat. Somehow, along the way, faith rubbed off on me, like one of those crayons chucked in the box beside its mates. I started out one colour, but by the end the colours of all the others became part of who I was.
Has it rubbed off on my children, is the million dollar question. Honestly? I don’t know. Having witnessed firsthand how damaging and destructive the church can be, my children have a lot of unresolved anger and resentment towards organised religion. At the moment, we don’t feel able to be part of a Christian community and the church hasn’t reached out to us to draw us back in. Our experience is of church leaders who preach confession, repentance and reconciliation, but don’t live it out when they’re confronted with it. Jesus wept and so have I.
What then gives me hope? My son who slept through his first visit to a church, turned thirteen last year. He asked us for a silver crucifix and he hasn’t taken it off since he got it. Yesterday when I was tidying his room, I found a Youth Bible stuffed under his pillow. Maybe that’s how it begins. A pinch of a different substance, a dab of another colour, a speck of something new, stepping out in curiosity with a willingness to rub up against the mystery, and there is God, waiting to be beside you.
This is so moving and important, Jayne. You've even made me appreciate 'Our God is a big God', which I hated when my mum's church sang it in normal mainly adult services, but makes total sense as part of Toddler Church. It's amazing that you can write so affectionately and beautifully about your experience all those years ago despite your feelings of being let down by other representatives of the churchcommunity and hierarchy.
Gosh I love this. I drifted from the church for a decade before being drawn back in by a v similar sounding toddler group (I remember the dance moves too)! I am incredibly careful to make sure my children know that the church is not the same as God, for that same awareness that the church is flawed, error-prone humans. As such I’m just letting them find their own way in faith, answering questions & inviting them to join me on my way too. Solidarity x (no thanks for getting that song in my head though 😂)