Chinese whispers

When my children were small we lived in an old water mill just outside the village of Raglan. When you live in or near a village you either take part in village life or you exist on the periphery. My children went to the village school and I was involved in every aspect of village life. Junior Football club? my boys were there and I was on the touchline. Cubs Scouts, Brownies, playgroup I was there. The Scouts and Guides in Raglan are, or used to be, Church units and had a Church parade once a month. I was in the church choir, a member of the WI and the young wives group and I was a committee member of the Village Hall Committee. All this evolved over time but when I first went to the church the children were quite small and this is where my story begins.

Eldest Son was five when we moved to the mill and it wasn't long after this that I started going regularly to church. I took the children with me and they were always well behaved, unless one of them dropped their collection money and started to giggle. That didn't happen too often. They enjoyed the hymns most of all because they liked to sing. With everything else that was going on in their lives they needed to be able to make noise.
One day I heard Eldest son talking to his teddy bears. He had two that he loved deeply one was called Baba, the other had no name. Until now. "Look Baba, this is Gladly. He's a church bear."

Gladly? where did that come from? I chose my moment carefully. I didn't want him to know I had been eavesdropping so I waited until he mentioned the bear by name and then asked why he had chosen that name.
As is usual in such moments Eldest Son gave me a scornful look as though wondering how his mother could be quite as stupid as that and said "Like the bear in the song, Mummy"
"Oh," said I "which song is that?" He sighed, his mother was obviously denser than even he had thought. "The one we sing in church, Mummy, you know." and then he sang to me
"Gladly, my cross I'd bear"

This story has been brought to you through Sian at fromhighinthesky. please visit her blog and enjoy all the other stories in the series.