Since it is almost my birthday and because my spiritual direction peer group is reading
Living Fully, Dying Well by Edward W. Bastian and Tina L. Staley, I am thinking of my life in stages. For the latter group, we filled out a form dividing our life into 7-year increments, documenting "significant moments," then "people who guided and influenced me," and ending with the question, "What did this phase contribute to the continuum of my life?" This was a life Review Exercise devised by
Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi.
For today's Friday Five, I am suggesting that we each divide our age into
5 sections. You don't have to say your age or ages for the different parts, unless you want to. In each of the 5 points, please describe a memorable and/or significant event, either good or unpleasant.
1. 0-12 years: I skipped fourth grade while living and going to school at
USMC Camp Pendleton, CA. In mid-year of third grade, we were moved into a new school on base--where I was put into a 3/4 grade combination class. Sometime in that last semester, I was tested and offered the opportunity to move up to 5th grade. In retrospect, I look at "third grade" as the first semester and "fourth grade" as the second semester.
2. 13-24 years: Packed together around my 21st birthday was student teaching in a first grade classroom in Seattle and marrying CB four days before Christmas.
Something connected with my different last names happened the following year when CB and I lived in Seattle. The teacher who mentored me asked that I be her substitute when she went on maternity leave. I distinctly remember walking her current first graders down the hall and seeing the second graders I had student taught the year before: students in each group argued about whether my name was "Miss C." or "Mrs. H." They were both correct!
3. 25-36 years: One of the biggest events during this period was moving from Oregon where CB went to graduate school at Oregon State University to Corpus Christi, TX in 1978. Talk about culture shock! Moving to the Gulf Coast in August was shockingly hot and humid (and flat)--and lonely (remember, I am an introvert).
My first teaching job was as a special ed resource room teacher in an UN-air-conditioned school. I remember sweat pouring down my legs and mosquitoes buzzing around, with all the windows open. That job lasted for one week before I quit and was given a job at an elementary school in the small black area of town, teaching third grade--in an air-conditioned school!
4. 37-48 years: In this time, we moved to RI for one year; NJ for two; and then back to Corpus Christi. The most difficult event was my mother's sudden death from pancreatic cancer in between the moves from RI to NJ, which caused even more anguish for me.
Hitting such a bottom brought me to seek God, which I relate in my
Faith Story.
5. 49-60 years: Life keeps getting better! The most dramatic and recent event was the birth of our first grandchild on November 22, 2010--
Avery! It is such fun to be a grandmother!
Probably because my favorite grandmother was called "Nana," my chosen name is also "Nana." We'll see if Avery cooperates with that! (I think that's why my mother decided to be called "Grannie," as her grandmother was called that, too.)
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My small suitcase, which weighs 10 lb. with nothing in it, is full to over-brimming, especially with the bulky gifts I am taking to my host family in Vologda. One of the items was a Thomas the Train Roundabout Station, which I had to order from Amazon as it could not be found here--it came in a huge box! I took that apart and have various pieces in my suitcase--unwieldy parts, especially the wooden/plastic roundabout track!
Please come back--I've pre-posted entries for every day of the trip. There will be cartoons, quotes and other items, plus where I'll be. I don't think I'll have access to a computer too often, but when I do, I'll post!
