Friday Five: First Times

 

 

 Mary Beth has posted a great Friday Five: The only problems is that the older you get you can't quite remember those 'firsts'.   

Ah, I have a tear in my eye...this is the last post I will make at this blog location, because the RevGals blog will be moving to its new location TOMORROW! Come right back here to this spot for the Preacher Party and you'll find a link for the redirect. 

And for today, here's a Friday Five looking at the other end of things: Firsts. With so many folks starting school, college, seminary, etc. I've been thinking of a lot of other firsts in my life.  Share with us, if you will:


1.Your first "place" - whether it was an apartment, dorm room, or home with a new spouse, the first place where you really felt like a grown-up:

My dorm room at UNT (Bruce Hall) was the first. But my real place was my first apartment. I had $100 dollars a month. My rent was $60 a month and the rest was for gas and food. I really learned how to live close to the bone and appreciate it. I had my own kitchen, a sitting room, bedroom and bath. It was 1964.

2  Your first time away from home

We traveled a good bit when I was a child because grandparents lived far away, so away from home was not traumatic for me. Girl Scout camp was an important refuge for me as a child. But the first time I was away from home over Christmas was the real sense of not being 'home' for me. I was on a mission

trip over the Christmas holiday in Mexico. Christmas Day was celebrated in silence since all 8 of us were sleeping on the floor of a single hut. We all wandered away from the hut and maintained that quiet until we returned to a feast supper that evening. It was an amazing day of understanding just how dependent I had become on the materialistic Christmases I had grown up with. It changed my life--it put me in touch with poverty and a simplicity of life at a very important time in my life--in my 20's and that time is still a touchstone for me today.

3. Your first job in your field of endeavor (so, not babysitting, unless you are A Professional Babysitter today):

I taught school before I graduated from college. I started the classroom music program in Keller, TX

. At the time Keller had one elementary school with 2 classes of each grade. I lacked 3 hrs of German to graduate and couldn't afford to go back to school unless I worked. Teachers were few and far between for small towns so I got the job. I had not had my student teaching, had no idea of what curriculum should be (and neither did the administration) so I made it up as I went along. I put on programs with every kid in the school. Now that school system has 23 elementary schools and 5 4A high schools and that town is where I attend church. It is one of the fastest growing communities in the nation. Who'd a thunk it?


4. Your first time hosting. Again, construed broadly, this could be a dinner for the in-laws, your first time to have guests for a holiday meal, etc.

Gads, I invited my music teacher to my first little apartment that I described above. I made baked chicken (my first attempt at making something nice) and the oven wasn't working right and the chicken didn't get done. I have nightmares about that evening to this day!
5. Your first love.That can be a person or something else!!


As a vowed celibate,  I guess it should be something else. ;>D.  But I fell in love with fly fishing.  I had fished a good bit when I lived in TX --the kind of worm and bait fishing that people rely on here to catch fish and eat them.  I especially loved doing that when I lived on the Gulf Coast when I would come home from school and gather my fishing gear and head for the beach.  I didn't catch too many good

eating fish but I would always take my crabnets and usually come home with enough for supper.  But when I moved to NY, I couldn't catch squat in the rivers or streams there.  One of my parishioners said I would have to learn to fly fish but I couldn't really afford a fly rod and all the equipment.  Then a woman in the parish said come over to the house, my husband left several rods and reels when he died.  You can have them.  So I had no excuse.  I took one lesson on how to cast on the Beaverkill (the holy grail of NY fly fishing) and I was hooked, both figuratively and emotionally.  (I had to dig a fly hook out of the back of my head).  But it was worth it.  It has been such a wonderful encounter with God's creation for me ever since.