Friday Five ~ First Times

In today's Friday Five for RevGals, we're looking at Firsts.

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.

Grown up?  I finished a semester of college before marrying at eighteen, but we put off having children until after we bought our first house a year later.  In the meantime, I had a lot of growing up to do, things like learning to cook.  Being scholarly — which we'd call nerdy today, I guess — I hadn't paid a lot of attention to my mother's attempts to teach me about food, even though she later became a cafeteria manager.  So I frequently called her to ask, "How do you cook pork chops?" or "How long does it take to bake potatoes in the oven?"  I tended to teach myself other things, like sewing.  One Sunday evening, while the family was at church (I don't remember why I stayed home), I cut out and sewed together a blouse on my own and was making hand-stitched button holes when Mom got home and inspected my work.  It was good enough to wear to school.  However, I'm still not fond of housework and would rather have my nose in a  book or write another blog post.

2.  Your first time away from home.  Construe this any way you want.  College?  Girl Scout Camp?  Study abroad?

I was a mere 18 months old, so I was told, when I first spent a night away from home — with relatives.  Obviously, I don't remember that, so I'll tell you about Girl Scout Camp at Fall Creek Falls, located near those falls pictured above.  My cousin Carolyn and I roomed in the same cabin with a couple of other girls.  The mountain streams, where we swam, were freezing cold.  We went to the falls and actually climbed down the steep sides to the base of the falls while holding onto a thick metal cable.  Fall Creek Falls is the highest free-fall waterfall east of the Mississippi River, according to Wikipedia.  The total height is 256 feet (78 m), and we campers climbed to the bottom and stood on the slippery wet rocks behind the falls.  Our counselors told us it was taller than Niagra Falls.  When I returned as an adult, the cable had been removed.  I can't imagine letting youngsters climb down (and back up) with no safety devices but our own hands clinging to the cable.  Yet I did it several times in the years I camped there, first as a Scout and later at church camp.

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

I was considered "second career" when I attended seminary, but we'll have to count to figure out how many "careers" I had before pastor.  Let's see, not counting babysitting (which I did overnight for neighbors while both parents worked, when I was only 14), I was a file clerk in a teacher's agency, did office work and shipping while in college, worked in the merchandising department at Sears Roebuck (had to leave that job at about 4-5 months pregnant in 1959 because that was the rule), motherhood (what, you don't call THAT a career?), illustrated a couple of books, became a published freelance writer at 25 (have been published locally, nationally, and internationally now), wrote grants for county government, edited two in-house publications (which included doing most of the writing and all of the B/W photography), did management training, started my own company doing training in the South (like at hospitals), taught continuing education at local colleges, went to seminary for my MDiv and became a pastor, taught Religions of the World as adjunct at Chattanooga State Community College, and opened my own bookstore with a friend after retirement.  Oh, yeah, one more — on Saturday nights, while getting my first degree (BA with double major in philosophy/religion and in English), I stuffed the Sunday funnies and advertising into our local newspaper.  Okay, which of those "count" as a field of endeavor?

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.

Must not have been memorable, since I'm not remembering anything I'd consider "first time."  I know I made a conscious effort not to be like my mother, who never seemed to sit down and join us when company was there — she was always jumping up to go get something else or re-fill a glass.  I made a point of enjoying the people whenever we entertained.  Charlotte and Harry came for supper a lot of weekends when we were first married, while they were still dating.  One odd fact:  three couples from our church married in February 1959 — Nathan and Mary Alice on the 1st, Jim and Jane on the 15th, and us on the 28th.  Harry and Charlotte waited another couple of years.  (Mary Alice died years ago, Charlotte died in March, Jane and I both divorced and are now "widowed," as our former husbands have died.)

5.  Your first love.  That can be a person or something else!!

I remember falling in love with Lewis in the first grade.  His dog jumped up on me after running through hot tar that summer and ruined my pretty blouse, but I don't remember if that's what ended it for us or starting back to school in the fall.  In second grade, I fell for Nathan (yes, that Nathan mentioned in #4) — and I don't remember any others until Tom, when I was in sixth grade and he was two years older (and totally unaware of me).

Hmm, looks like I took a walk down memory lane.