Day 166

Tired. My body didn’t want to quiet down and let me sleep. I don’t know why I’m in pain at night. Finally a couple of ibuprofen let me drift off for a short rest. Today I am going to church. Haven’t been for a month and I’m going because it is a day of reconciliation. I don’t know what happens to my connection there. I can list many reasons but it is a feeling in my gut that keeps me away.

POH

The freshman class at Humboldt State in 1952 numbered 151 students. I was one of them. I finally graduated in the summer of 1964.  Small things made my education take longer than the usual four years. I was married at the end of my sophomore year at age 19 and only four month later, I was pregnant. Determined to finish my college education, I commuted from Scotia to Arcata every school day and that was before freeways. My 20^th birthday presents that year were maternity clothes as the last skirt wouldn’t button comfortably. There were varied responses to my new wardrobe. The first day I was in a curriculum class when the teacher asked everyone to close their eyes. “You must learn to be observant. Barbara, tell us something you noticed this morning.” She replied, “Sharon is wearing a maternity smock.” I turned red. The teacher did too. She told me later that she hadn’t noticed. As the pregnancy advanced the twin embryos showed a lot. The hills of Humboldt became steeper and steeper as I huffed and puffed from Founders’ Hall down to College Elementary School. Two classes that were as far from each other as possible. My art teacher, Reece Bullen, announced that I was the only student who could sit and do nothing and still be the most creative student in the class. The PE methods teacher put a basketball under his shirt and made fun of my increasingly odd walking method. The children’s literature teacher, Miss Libby Ward, gave me a C in her class. I went to the Dean and said that I had not missed a class or an assignment and had an A on every test. He called her in and she said, “Pregnant women don’t belong in college.” And with her tight little mouth she said to me, “Where is your modesty?” I got my A in the class. By May I could no longer sit in the student desks and had a problem getting behind the steering wheel in my car. The boys were born about five weeks after the semester ended.