Caleb's Best Friend Isn't LDS and His Mom Hid the Coffee Maker

Owen's mom, Dana, texted on Thursday at 9:40 at night, and I stood in the laundry room with a basket on my hip typing and deleting the same sentence. Her husband had borrowed a boat from a guy at work. They were taking it out on Deer Creek Sunday morning with a cooler of everything and wanted to know if Caleb could come.

I wrote "We would love to, but" four times. One draft apologized so much it sounded like I'd run over her mailbox, and another one, I'm sorry to say, used the word "standards." What I finally sent was short. We keep Sundays for church and family, but Caleb would love any other day. She wrote back "Totally get it, rain check!" with a little boat.

Caleb took it fine, being eleven. I was the one sweating over a text to a woman I've sat next to on the bleachers for six seasons.

Owen lives three doors down and has been Caleb's person since T-ball, which makes him a fixture at our table, especially on Fridays, when he eats more of the homemade pizza than my husband will admit to. He's the extra shoes by the door in every picture from this summer. His family isn't LDS and they spend Sundays at the lake, and they're lovely.

Is it okay for my son's best friend to not be a member?

I grew up in St. George, where nearly everybody was a member, so I came to this with no practice, and for about a week when Caleb and Owen first got close I had 2 Corinthians 6:14 rattling around in my head. "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers." It got used loosely when I was in Young Women, in a tone that made it sound like it covered playdates.

It's a verse about being yoked, the way you are in a marriage, and Caleb is eleven. All he's after is somebody to throw a baseball with.

Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

Matthew 22:37-40

The second commandment doesn't come with a membership check, and Owen is, quite literally, the neighbor. He came to the ward pool night in June and went home with a sunburn and two brownies, and he has asked twice since then whether there's another one.

What do you say when a Sunday invitation comes?

Caleb and I worked this out on Friday afternoon in the driveway, him pumping up a bike tire and me holding the gauge. I told him Owen's mom had asked about Sunday and he said "Can't, church" before I'd finished the sentence. Fine, but I asked what he'd say if Owen pushed, because Owen is eleven too and eleven-year-olds push.

He squeezed the tire twice. "We do church and then Grandma calls," he said. "And then it's already dinner."

I left that alone and added only the half I'd have forgotten if I hadn't spent years as a third-grade teacher, which is to say the no and offer a day in the same breath. Friday works and Owen can say yes to that.

No speech about why. If Owen asks, and he might, it can be one sentence about our church and then back to the bike. Owen's follow-up, according to Caleb, was "Does church have snacks."

Coffee and tea at their house, and the cord hanging out of the cabinet

Dana and I had been doorstep people for years, the kind who hand over a kid and a water bottle and wave. This spring she finally asked me in to wait while the boys finished a Lego thing, and there was a white cord hanging out of the pantry cabinet like a tail. She'd put the coffee maker inside and shut the door on it. I'm fairly sure she did it before I got there, and she was a little pink about it.

I said something clumsy like "Oh, you don't have to do that," and she laughed and said she'd had no idea what the rules were and didn't want to offend me in her own house. I had my car keys in my hand. I've spent years teaching children to say "no thank you" politely and had never once practiced it on a grown-up who was nervous about us.

So I said it plainly. We don't drink coffee or tea, it doesn't bother me one bit that you do, and the kids will take anything else you've got. The machine was back on the counter the next week.

She keeps lemonade in the fridge now and a box of peppermint tea in the cupboard that is, I'm told, mine.

My one rule is to tell the other parent early, in your own voice, before anybody has to guess. I wish I'd texted Dana years ago. It would have saved her a spring of hiding small appliances.

For the kids, I still teach the small script. "No thanks, I'm good with water." No reason attached. If somebody asks why, "we don't drink coffee, it's a church thing" is enough. Soda in our house is a different story, as David's 2:30 Diet Coke would tell you, so Caleb has never had to give a speech about what the Word of Wisdom does and doesn't cover when Owen's dad hands him a Dr Pepper.

Should Caleb be allowed to say "my mom said no"?

When we finished with the tire, Caleb added that if Owen kept pushing he'd just say his mom said no. "Then it's not me saying it," he said.

I told him that was fine, since eleven is young to stand at the front of anything and I'd rather he have an easy exit than defend our whole way of life at the end of somebody's driveway. What I can't tell you is whether I'm teaching him that it's okay to hand it to someone else. He'll be fourteen and then sixteen, and the exit won't be there. This is one of the places the messy middle keeps catching me, because he asked in the middle of a tire and I answered in four seconds.

For now he can blame me. Anytime.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I let my child be friends with someone who isn't a member of the Church?

Yes, and I'd say it with a straight face to anyone from my old Young Women class. The friendship is where he gets to practice being kind to someone who believes differently, and you get to see what he does with it. Keep an eye on how he's treated, same as with any friend.

What do I say when my child asks why a friend doesn't come to church?

Tell him families do different things and ours goes to church on Sunday because it matters to us. Then leave the friend's family out of it. If it sounds like they're missing something, a child will repeat it at their kitchen table.

How should my child handle being offered coffee or tea at a friend's house?

Have him say "No thanks, I'm good with water" out loud a few times at home, so it doesn't come out as a speech when he's standing at somebody's counter. Soda is a different matter in our house, so Owen's dad handing Caleb a Dr Pepper doesn't require a ruling.

Do I need to tell the other family what we don't do?

I do, in a text or at the door, and keep it short. Something like "we don't drink coffee or tea, but please don't change a thing on our account." Parents want to be good hosts and mostly have no idea what's welcome.

Dana's rain check is good, and Sunday went about how you'd guess. We had church and then Grandma called, and Owen sent Caleb a picture that night of his dad holding a fish about the size of a shoe.

with love, Melissa