People hear “pastor’s kid” and they think free access to the church gym, an inside track on the youth group snack budget, and a childhood bathed in spiritual enrichment. I am here to tell you that what it actually means is living in a house owned by a committee where the carpet color was selected by a congregational vote in 1997 and has not been revisited since.

The parsonage at my father’s church was a three-bedroom ranch built in 1974. It was always clean because someone from the deacon board could stop by at any time, and they did, often without calling. I once came downstairs in pajamas at 11 a.m. on a Saturday to find the property committee measuring the kitchen for a renovation they would discuss for six years and never complete.

The thermostat was not ours. I do not mean that metaphorically. The church board set the temperature. My father submitted a request in writing once to raise it two degrees in January. The request was tabled.

“I couldn’t have posters on the walls because it was ‘church property.’ I couldn’t have a dog because the deacons said the yard was ‘for fellowship use.’ I did, however, get to hear every piece of congregational gossip by age nine, so that was formative.”

My brother and I were expected to behave as though the entire town was watching, because it was. If I misbehaved at school, my father heard about it before I got home. Not from the school. From a church member who worked at the front desk. The parsonage had no secrets. The parsonage had no privacy. The parsonage had mauve carpet and a dishwasher that ran only on the gentle cycle because the trustees said the motor was “delicate.”

I love my father. I love the church. I do not love mauve carpet, and I never will.

At press time, I was visiting home for the weekend and the property committee had left a note on the counter asking my father to “please not use the back door so much, it’s wearing the hinges.”