Photo by Ana Tavares on Unsplash The misery I’d been feeling about beginning my seventh year of teaching did not abate, even with the excitement of a hurricane. My problem was that I wanted to go back to Ohio, specifically to my alma mater. I didn’t consider anything else, including something as simple as trying for a different teaching job in West Palm Beach, where there were other Christian schools, not as rigid as the one at which I was teaching and which would have allowed me to stay with a good roommate and live five miles from the Atlantic Ocean. I’ve always been a person who saw the basket she wanted, just one beautiful one, and put all here eggs in it. I’d applied to one college, and gotten in. I’d applied to one Christian school, but didn’t get the job. However, a few months later, I was on my way to a school I’d never heard of in a place I’d never been. Now I wanted a new life, which was perhaps an early start on my 30-crisis. In that long-ago time, one wrote a letter, waited days for it arrive, and more days for a response. I’d kept in loose touch with the man who’d been a reference librarian at my college, but had since become the director. I don’t remember most of the letter, just one line: I need a new boss. How about you? Time passed, because academe isn’t usually ready to hire for the following year as soon as a new one has begun. When the letter did come, in January as I recall, he told me he wasn’t sure in which department the opening would be, but he would have one. It was that simple. I didn’t care what he had to offer, though the idea of working in audiovisuals was a bit daunting. I was going back to the place that felt like home. I didn’t tell anyone officially until March. Preacher said he was hurt that I’d kept this news from him, but I couldn’t worry about that. I had my own emotions to deal with: fear of beginning again, guilt over leaving students I loved, sadness at leaving friends and the ocean. Trying to figure out how to move my things—more now than would fit in the back of a Ford—also kept my mind and heart busy. But I didn’t second guess the decision.
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[photo from wikimedia commons. We'll let the gentleman stand for one of the pastors who visited Joy Fellowship.] Jesus, Others, and You—what a wonderful way to spell joy! That was the motto of the women’s JOY Fellowship at the church. Women in all the Baptist churches I ever knew had no real power. So, women made their own groups, with rules and structures that mimicked those of males. They had officers and a program. At my home church, the Women’s Missionary Society held monthly meetings to read letters from missionaries and to do such work as might be of help, especially to the women missionaries. They tore old sheets into strips for bandages, sending them off to nurses and doctors far away, for instance. I do not remember the J.O.Y. group having any such lofty purpose. Women ate a potluck lunch together; there were indeed forgettable programs—at least, I’ve certainly forgotten them. Not that I attended often; meetings during the school year were impossible. I went because Jean, a woman whom I deeply admired, was heading it. I have a 100-page spiral bound cookbook, Cooking With Joy, compiled in 1975, which I still use, though many of the recipes take more work than I’m willing to do or just aren’t appetizing. The one for rabbit stew begins with cleaning the rabbits, for instance. Another goes on for a page and a half, which is more effort than I want to expend, love food though I do. That recipe also includes a pound of pig mouth and three to four pig tails. For me now, the issue is that the acronym’s stated meaning left women always last. It was one more way to socialize women to take a lower place and be happy about it--how unselfish, how like Christ! Always putting oneself last does not do much good to any person’s health or state of mind. Nor is it generally a way of life to which men aspire, but women were encouraged to adopt it. School was delayed for a week because of the flooding; when it opened, we were still without power, and turned a corner of Alicia’s classroom into our beauty salon. We lugged an ironing board and iron, as well as a makeup mirror, blow dryers, and hot rollers into the room, gathering to primp before the students arrived. Without air conditioning, it was hot at home; our cold showers were welcome. Sleep truly was harder, because of the heat. One morning after the storm I woke, still on the sofa, about 2 a.m. When I realized I wasn’t going to be able to get back to sleep, I got dressed and drove down to Lake Park, a few miles away, and picked up a dozen doughnuts for our breakfast. I wasn’t yet thirty; I was fearless about driving alone at night. We did get more sleep that week, simply because there was little to do without electricity. After supper we played board games or charades—based on Bible stories, of course—by candlelight. Jennie was convinced that Alicia and I were cheating, because we’d lived together long enough to guess each other’s charades quickly. Alicia would walk into the candlelit room and pantomime opening a window, and I knew immediately that it was Daniel in Babylon, opening his window toward Jerusalem to pray. The first football game of the season occurred on Friday night; we were still without power. It was doubly frustrating because the people across the street had power; the lines ran behind the houses, so they were connected and we were not. We joked that it was like living during the plagues of Egypt. When darkness fell on Egypt, the children of Israel still had light. How had we—good Christian women trying to serve God—become the Egyptians? When we drove home that night from the football game, we saw the huge Florida Power & Light truck parked just down the street. I got out of the car and ran down the sidewalk, yelling “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” We were among the last homes to have power restored, after a week of living, as we said, like hardy pioneers. The waters receded, but much had changed. Nothing is sadder than palm trees without fronds and stores and homes with boarded-up windows. We were fortunate; we had no broken windows, no fallen trees. We returned to our classrooms and daily routines. photo: NASA/NOAA via Wikimedia Commons (Hurricane David over Florida) Alicia and I had moved again, this time to a yellow two-bedroom, one-bath house closer to the school and church. A rental, owned by parents of girls attending the school, it had a Florida room, enclosed with jalousie windows all along the back wall. This gave us a view of the patio and the tropical plants that grew there. I loved that patio, despite the uncomfortable wrought iron bench that encircled a large deciduous tree. Its leaves fell in all seasons with a satisfying crunch when I swept. Spiky asparagus ferns grew wild around the edges of the patio, which was also surrounded by hibiscus that bloomed throughout the year—red, yellow, and pink flowers. We also had a clothesline on one side, with a yellow allamanda twining up one of the metal posts. Along with the pink bougainvillea, the front yard also boasted crotons serving the function of shrubs across the front of the house. Bromeliads nestled in the branches of a large tree; two smaller trees bracketed the walkway. Always we had something colorful in bloom. Our sometime roommate, Jennie, was coming to live with us again in September, arriving just before the predicted hurricane hit. Together the three of us put down the storm shutters—battening down the hatches, as we gleefully called it. Jennie, the self-acknowledged neurotic, had prepared, as we had not; she had a battery-powered radio and nonperishable edibles. I have never been afraid of storms, and this was my first hurricane, so I didn’t realize what was coming. We’d planned that Jennie would sleep on the sofa positioned against the Florida room’s wall of windows, but I knew she’d be terrified, and none of us would get any sleep that night. So I lied to her. “Jennie, why don’t you sleep in my room until the hurricane passes? You know, I’m not sleeping very well anyway. I’ll take the sofa.” “Oh, Judy, are you sure?” she asked, every nerve quivering like a hound that’s scented a rabbit. “Well, there’s no point in both of us being awake all night,” I said. So Jennie went to my bedroom and I did stay awake, but only for a little while, to watch the lightning over the trees. (Almost nothing affects my sleep.) The hurricane hit West Palm September 3, the week school was to begin. Although islands in the Caribbean and areas further north were harder hit, Florida suffered some $95 million in damages. The winds ripped the palm fronds from their trunks and the streets flooded. We lost power, as did much of the county. We had friends nearby who still had electricity, so we took our perishables to their home. Every day we stopped by to pick up food, which we cooked on a hibachi in the carport. Every day we heard the radio announcement of the number of homes still without power, and every day, we still were among that number. |
Baptist GirlI was a conservative Baptist girl who grew up to become a career Christian, working first in a Baptist school and then in a Baptist college. For about three decades, it was very good until it wasn’t, and I had to leave. But the Baptists formed me. This is my homage to the good times and good people of the world I left, finally, at forty-three, when I became an Episcopalian. These are my memories; others might disagree with my recollections. So be it. Archives
January 2024
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