Just One Thing by Holly Jacobs

deerstalker hat.” I studied our end-of-the-bar friend and laughed. He was wearing a postal worker outfit. “ Cheers ?” I asked.
    “Cliff Clavin at your service, ma’am.”
    I laughed. “Perfect, Jerry.”
    “So, what are you?” Sam asked.
    I took off my jacket, untied my striped scarf, and let my wild, teased hair loose. Then I carefully put my glasses on and took the unglazed clay pot out of my bag.
    “Harry Potter?” Jerry asked.
    “No, she’s a Hairy Potter . H-A-I-R-Y.” Jerry looked confused so Sam explained. “She does pottery. She’s a potter.”
    “But there are no universal potters I could think of, so I went for—”
    “A hairy potter,” Jerry finished. “That’s a good one.”
    “Well, it’s only good if people know I made pottery. Otherwise, it requires an explanation.”
    “Still, it’s creative,” Jerry said.
    Sam handed me a Guinness and said, “Go mingle. It’s a party.”
    I did mingle. I explained my costume and I met people. Some I recognized, some who must have frequented the bar on other nights I didn’t.
    I spent almost an hour talking to Mike and Emma. They had a small farm out my way. They raised llamas and kids. “Saturday nights are our night out,” Emma said. “We have a neighbor girl who comes to stay with the kids.”
    “How many?”
    “Four,” she said. “We thought we were done after our third, but seems God had other ideas.”
    Lee and I had thought we were done after the twins. Gracie was a surprise baby.
    I remembered right after she was born, the nurse handed her to me, and Lee kissed my forehead and whispered, “Surprise.”
    I smiled at the memory and realized that I could remember without the gut-wrenching pain.
    That was progress.
    Sam had hooked an iPod up to speakers and started a Halloween playlist. The Ghostbusters theme. Time Warp. Thriller . When Monster Mash started to play, he came up behind me. “May I have this dance?”
    He took me in his arms and started to slow dance. It wasn’t really a dance, more a hold-me-close-and-turn-in-a-circle sort of thing. “I couldn’t dance before I messed up my leg,” he whispered in my ear.
    Then he laughed. And I laughed too as we turned awkward circles together in the center of the bar. “This is tonight’s one-thing,” I told him. “And it’s a very good thing.”
    “It is,” he agreed.
    I nodded. I knew that I’d pull this particular memory out in the future, and it would always make me smile.

The next morning, I took Angus for a long walk up the road.
    There was a small church about a half mile up the road at the corner. When the kids were younger, we attended services there when we spent time at camp in the summer.
    It was a very small congregation, but they’d been nice people. The minister had been ancient. Gracie always said he looked like Santa and the twins would torment her about still believing in Santa.
    Today, as Angus and I walked by, they were singing at the Sunday morning service.
    I stood a moment and listened. I recognized the song. I Love to Tell the Story.
    I remembered going to church when I was nine or ten and singing that song. It was my grandmother’s small church in Wesleyville. I spent a lot of weekends with her and we’d go together. She’d hold my hand and sing with gusto, not caring that her voice was off-key. And it was definitely off-key. My father used to joke that she couldn’t hit a tune if it were the broadside of a barn.
    I hadn’t thought of my grandmother in years. I’d called her Nana and she used to make me tea in a battered yellow teapot and tell me stories.
    Part of me wanted to leave Angus tied to a tree and sneak inside and sing along.
    I missed church, I realized.
    I hadn’t known that before, but now, I did. I missed it.
    After my grandmother passed away, I didn’t go to church regularly. Neither of my parents was active in their church and never pushed the issue. But when I’d had kids, I’d decided to make church a part of our