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.
0 Comments
[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. After three summers of day camp and six years of teaching, I decided to take off during the summer of ’79. Alicia was going to work that summer with her parents at a camp out west; she gave me a bicycle for my birthday before she left. I had an upright piano and was taking lessons. I made a chart to keep my days full of useful things. In June I went to see my mother and made a side trip to my college. I ran into an English prof I’d had who was also theologically savvy. After we talked for a while, he gave me a reading list of Christian thinkers and took me to the bookstore, using his discount to get some of them for me. I stopped in at the library where I had worked; my reference buddy from student days had become director. It was good to touch base with him, to be in a place that felt like home. A friend from college and I went to Stratford Canada’s Shakespeare Festival. Then it was back to West Palm to read, ride my bike, abuse the piano, walk the beach. I finally had time. What I didn’t have was money; I ate a lot of ramen noodles, too proud to ask my mother for some cash. Near the end of the summer, I borrowed a dollar from one of my students so I could buy a head of lettuce. I think I was courting scurvy. But I woke up that lazy summer, reading deeply, thinking alone. I’d put my brain in mothballs; no one seemed interested in theology to the extent I was, and I didn’t need my brain for the sermons I heard. I was teaching on autopilot, having taught each English course at least once, and some of them six times. Between growing concern over my mother (she was fine, but shouldn't I be closer, now that she was a widow?), a general homesickness for the Eastern Woodland landscape of Ohio, and all the reading I was doing, by the time school started that fall, I wondered, What am I doing here? Life got better for us all when Berean decided it needed a special ed teacher and hired Sandi, a dynamo. Sandi was divorced, but she and her young son came to Florida to live with her ex-husband’s cousin, Lou, who worked for the phone company. Lou, in our world of paycheck to paycheck, was rich. She owned a camper; one day Sandi invited Alicia and me to go to the beach with her, in the camper. We packed necessities—food and books. It was raining when we got to Jonathan Dickinson State Park, and Sandi parked under some pine trees. We heard the rain and the waves crashing on the nearby shore. We each found a spot to claim in the trailer and opened our books and were silent. Later, Sandi cooked hot dogs for us, but not ordinary dogs. No, these were split, stuffed with sauerkraut, and wrapped in bacon before being grilled. Sandi also did upscale. She still had connections in Maine, and one year for Christmas Preacher sprang for lobsters for all of us at the staff party. Live lobsters, being boiled to death in the kitchen, trying to escape the large pots, was amusing. We ate them fresh, the butter sliding down our chins, without a qualm over the pain we inflicted on another creature. We were so happy. We were usually broke, Alicia and I, and Sandi claimed to be as well. But then she’d root around in her purse and come up with a twenty-dollar bill, and it was hard in that moment to like her. When we said we had no money, we meant we had no money. This did not seem to be a concept Sandi grasped. She was wonderful with the special needs kids, as I was not. The school at some point decided to mainstream the kids into a couple of classes. I’d had zero training, and I handled things poorly in my ignorance. One of the boys, a lanky, brown-haired teen, rocked in his desk. I'd take him by the shoulders and hold him still. He’d giggle, and I’d let go, and he’d soon begin rocking again. I only hope I did no lasting damage to those students. Once I learned not to dip into the bag of chocolate chips my roommate intended for cookies, our shared home life was never bad. But when we were three—two Midwesterners teaching second grade and English, and a history teacher from Maine—we had even more fun, mostly at the expense of the self-described “Mainiac.” While I don’t think we were mean, the two of us had been together long enough to “get” each other. The school claimed at least six days a week, because church offered no escape. We were required to attend the church that owned the school (the pastor of the church was the president of the school, though he had no training in education). So, Miss Johnson, and all the rest of the faculty, were available twice on Sundays, should any parents want to confer, as did happen. And if there was a sports event, a concert, a play, or a fundraiser, Saturday could also belong to the school. The additional responsibilities of lesson plans and grading left little time over for just being who we were outside of work. We did try to have a life of our own. Alicia was more craft-oriented than I was; she embroidered, did quilling, painted on fabric, took a class in folk art painting. I read and wrote and also tried the painting on fabric craze; most of the time, however, I was on the couch with a book, reading silently but laughing out loud sometimes. Jennie read Time magazine and obsessively watched the news, even on vacation. The books she read concerned her subject area, not P.G. Wodehouse or Dorothy Sayers. Although she was funny, she didn’t have a frivolous mind. One day, in that self-absorbed and careless twenty-something way, I asked her, “Jennie, what do you do to be a person?” I think I hurt her feelings, though I was just obliquely suggesting she develop some hobbies and not be so wrapped up in teaching and her future plans for mission work. That question came back to me this morning, still early in my retirement. What am I doing to be a person? Example of tole painting: Artisan unknown. Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9983187 The Breakers Hotel on Palm Beach, a place I never stayed. Photo by Nick22aku at English Wikipedia, CC BY 2.5, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6426605 The other night I dreamed I couldn’t get oriented, which isn’t out of the realm of possibility, even though I’ve lived in this valley for most of my life. This morning I saw a photograph of a datura blooming, and it took me right back to the years I lived in West Palm Beach. That city, whatever its failings, had the sense to name its downtown streets in alphabetical order, using the names of flowers, for a long stretch. As a writer, I thought it was so much more pleasant than numbering them, though they did begin numbered streets after Clematis, the street the public library was on. Datura followed, with Evernia, Fern, and Gardenia behind. Many of the flowers, including the datura, were not familiar to me. Having the ocean nearby also helped as I oriented myself to my new life far from Ohio. (I still drive by kinetic memory in Akron; I have not much sense of where I am, big picture.) In West Palm, I had only three directions to worry about. If I went east, I’d land at the intracoastal and then the Atlantic Ocean. “Walk east,” was a favored insult in that region. I could get almost anywhere in West Palm without too much trouble, although if someone asked me whether Delray Beach was north or south of home, I had no idea. (I’ve consulted a map; it's south.) I just knew what ramp to take, or which way to turn on U.S. Highway 1. Lake Park, where faculty friends lived, required a left turn. Downtown, and the three bridges to Palm Beach, was a right turn. General confusion results from the lack of creativity in naming the towns. There’s the overarching “the Palm Beaches,” and Palm Beach itself, the home of the ultra-rich. One of the over-the-top places to drive past was the Breakers Hotel, where Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald stayed and played in the Roaring Twenties. There’s North Palm Beach and West Palm Beach and Palm Beach Gardens. There's a town north of the county named Palm Bay. I will admit that palms, whether Royal or Poinciana varieties, are impressive and lovely. But a bit of variety would be appreciated.
This is an engagement photo of Nicholas II and Alexandra of Russia. She looks less than thrilled. I’m not sure what it was about teaching history/civics/government, but we went through history teachers rapidly. After my first year, the man who'd been teaching history left. Then Sammi was let go, then a woman came who left to get married, then a man came who had a nervous breakdown in the middle of class. Finally, we got Jennie, and life got better on so many levels. She was a graduate of Bob Jones University, so she was conservative, acceptable to the administration. She was also on her way to the mission field, but she stayed with us for several years. At least one of those years she lived alone in a place she called “the cave.” None of us was ever invited to visit or permitted to enter. Some of the time, off and on, she lived with Alicia and me, adding New England astringent humor to our Midwest sensibilities. Language was sometimes an issue. Her accent was thick—it took me a long time to understand her one day in her quest for creematata, which turned out to be cream of tartar. And one Thursday night after visitation when as she got out of the car, she said she was going inside to read before bed. "Are you still reading Roots?" I asked, with a Midwest accent, pronouncing the oo like a u. “Roots? Roots? No, I am going to read Roots (long o sound). Roots is like roof, which is what a dog says,” she replied as exited the car and stalked inside. Alicia and I were laughing so hard we couldn’t get out of the car. No one could make me laugh like Jennie. Generally easygoing, Jennie warned us: "Don't mess with my man, don't mess with my food." None of us had a steady man, but the second prohibition was valid. She had a stash of junk food; we never dared trespass. True but now embarrassing: Jennie and I went through a period when we passed notes during our study halls, which met concurrently and were separated only by the science lab. We were playing a game with it, because Jennie was obsessed at the time with Nicholas and Alexandra, the last czar and czarina of Russia. If memory serves, Jennie signed her notes Nicholas, and I signed mine as General Foch. [Foch was a French general; I have no idea why I chose his name, but I wrote messages from the front.] We used students as couriers. They included the Swedish ambassador (a big, blond football player), the Spanish minister (a Cuban-born student), and Private Howdy, who always did his duty. We were young; we were bored; we thought ourselves very clever. |
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
December 2023
Categories |