I was happy to be at the college I’d chosen, but I was introverted and shy. I was also struggling with my perceived need to squelch the young woman I’d been during my final years of high school, thinking she wasn’t Christian enough, or the right kind of Christian. She’d had fun and laughed, and that couldn’t be right. Finally, I was homesick for my church. I hid in my room much of the time, writing letters and reading.
Sitting on my bunk bed doing not much one afternoon, I was completely unprepared when the door burst open. A big girl catapulted into the room shouting, “This room has a noisy tradition to uphold!” I was terrified. My room had been her room, I learned, and we were already connected. Her dad knew my dad, who had asked that Bev look out for me. In a student body of a thousand, with multiple women’s dorms, Bev lived just down the hall. And her Grandpa Jay had been my junior high bus driver, whom I’d adored. What were the odds? She and her friends—all juniors—took me in, sort of like adopting a scared puppy, I imagine. I was privy to intel from young women who’d spent two years learning the culture of the place, including which profs and classes to avoid. I didn’t have to make friends among my own class, nor among those sadistic sophomores in my dorm. Bev had a motherly streak that benefited me in the spring, when I got blood poisoning from a cut on my foot. The campus doctor told me to soak it in hot water. Bev brought me basins of nearly boiling liquid, insisting I put my foot in the water, standing guard to make sure I didn’t wimp out. The red streaks going up my leg receded. As the doctor had told me, straight-faced, “Few people die of this nowadays.” I didn’t die of blood poisoning or loneliness. I had goodhearted, kind friends. When they graduated two years later, I was bereft.
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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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