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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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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