Honor Thy Parents

The last bell of the school year rings at Odyssey Academy, and Laura-Jean Fremont walks out with her friend Kelly Woods, thrilled that sixth grade is finally behind her. Laura, as she now prefers to be called, has bigger things on her mind: the graduation party she is throwing for herself at Whit's End the very next night. She has planned every detail on her own, picked out her own decorations, and arranged everything with Mr. Whittaker. When Kelly says she is looking forward to finally meeting Laura's mother and father, Laura tells her they will not be coming. They have to go out of town, she explains.

On the way to the store, the two girls stop when they hear a man being scolded by his boss. The man takes it quietly and never defends himself. Kelly feels sorry for him. Laura decides he probably got exactly what he deserved.

At Whit's End, Whit is reading aloud about the prophet Elijah on the mountain when Eula Fremont slips in through the back door, still in the old work dress she wears nearly every day. She confides that Laura has grown distant ever since starting at Odyssey Academy - the school is expensive, and she and her husband Homer have both taken on extra jobs to keep their daughter there. Lately Laura seems to want nothing more than to be out of the house, and she never brings her friends home. When Laura and Kelly arrive and find Eula there, Laura is mortified. Then Homer walks in - and Kelly recognizes him at once as the man they saw getting yelled at that afternoon. Laura pulls her parents aside and tells them they embarrass her in front of her friends, that sometimes she wishes she had never been born into this family, and she runs out.

The next day Whit tells Laura the apology she owes is not to him or to Kelly, but to her mom and dad. Laura calls her parents hicks. So Whit brings in a visitor he has invited: Mr. Heath, Homer's boss, who came on his day off to say that the scolding was entirely a mistake. He had blamed Homer for something Homer had not done. Homer could have reported him and cost him his job, but instead he told Mr. Heath to forget it and said he understood the pressure he must have been under.

Laura admits she was wrong about that, but insists that other kids' parents are respected while hers are only laughed at. So Whit takes her downtown to a mission house, where a plaque by the door carries Homer and Eula Fremont's names at the top as the people who helped start it. Her mother, Whit explains, comes every afternoon to serve food, and wears that worn old dress so the people she serves will not feel ashamed of their own. Owen Barker, who once lived on the street with nowhere to go, greets Laura warmly and tells her that the job placement center that gave him and so many others a fresh start was her parents' idea. Then a woman named Cora quietly asks if Laura is really the Fremonts' daughter. Last winter, Cora says, Homer and Eula found her nearly frozen in an alley, took her to the hospital, and brought her back to the mission. She is too embarrassed to say it to them herself, but she asks Laura to tell them that she prays for them every night.

Whit tells Laura this is only the tip of the iceberg, and that her parents keep quiet about all of it because they help people out of love, not for attention. The Bible, he reminds her, does not say to honor your father and mother as long as they dress well or behave the way you would like. It simply says to honor them, with no conditions attached, and it attaches a promise: that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth. Some children, Whit admits, have parents who are very hard to honor, but Laura has parents who love and care for her, and showing them respect is a small thing to give in return.

Laura is sorry, but sorry no longer feels like enough. She wants a real way to make it up to them, and Whit has an idea - one that means moving fast. That evening Homer and Eula are coaxed back to Whit's End, convinced their daughter does not want them at her party. The lights come on to a shout of surprise. Laura has turned her own graduation party into a surprise party for her mom and dad, and she raises a toast to Eula and Homer Fremont, the best parents in the whole world. She apologizes for the way she has treated them and asks if they can spend more time together. When her father tells her how much they love her, Laura corrects him gently on one small point: her name is Laura-Jean.