10-20-30 Virus
Hey, want to catch a virus? This originated with Mary DeMuth over at Relevantblog.
Quick, where were you ten, twenty, thirty years ago? (If you’re younger than thirty, clearly you can only tell us about ten and twenty years ago.)
Ten years ago: My husband and I lived in a parsonage situated on ten acres in northern Michigan. Our twins were four years old and I was five months pregnant with my first “unlikely pregnancy.” I felt great and loved every second of pregnancy. I had no sickness, no complaints. Once a month, I drove forty-five minutes to the home of an Amish midwife who checked to make sure my pregnancy was developing normally.
My husband pastored a small country church and I taught Sunday School to 4-year olds and led singing from the piano every Sunday morning. I babysat a few kids in my home to earn extra money. In preparation for Halloween, the boys and I made a scarecrow for the front yard. I was planning a little pre-trick-or-treat party and perhaps had already begun to sew the costumes the boys wanted: pumpkins!
Twenty years ago: I had been married for almost three months. In July, my husband and I drove his Chevy Blazer from Washington state to Connecticut where he enrolled in graduate school. I worked as a legal secretary in a law office, which sound exciting but I was bored because the lawyer had just begun her solo practice and I didn’t have enough work to do. (And she practiced contract law which was dull. I should note that her handwriting was illegible which made transcribing her work tricky.) When she’d leave the office, I’d gaze out the window onto the Green in New Haven and wonder at the beauty of the autumn leaves.
We had no television so I read a lot in the evenings while my husband studied. (The first winter there I read The Hobbit, following the entire Lord of the Rings triology.) I weighed 145 pounds and thought I was fat because after getting married my pants started to get tighter.
Thirty years ago: I lived with my dad and his new wife of only a few months. (She was 29 and never planned to have kids, so we were all struggling to adjust.) My mother had remarried, too, and lived in a small apartment near the middle school I attended. I rarely saw her, though. I was in seventh grade and we lived on a dead end behind the cemetery in a new brown house with brown carpets. My bedroom was lavender. My dad bought me a full-sized piano and it barely fit in my bedroom. I took piano lessons from Sue Moser, who taught at a community college, but I loathed practicing and didn’t apply myself as I should have.
The boys at school teased me because I was tall and mature for my age . . . I dealt with this by wearing my puffy blue down jacket all the time. (I never took it off during school hours.) I earned straight-A’s without much effort. I weighed 136 pounds and believed myself to be disgustingly fat. By the next year, I would weigh 123 pounds and still think I was disgustingly fat.
* * *
If you want to play along with Mary’s “virus,” describe on your blog what you were doing 10-20-30 years ago. Link back to Mary’s blog (http://relevantblog.blogspot.com) and mine, too (http://unretouchedphoto.com). Let’s see how far we can spread this thing! (You can also play along by merely leaving a comment below.)
It’s amazing how that perfect-weight-virus takes hold at such a young age. Silly!
BTW, I felt awful all three pregnancies and never want to be pregnant again! I guess I’m not the earth mama I envisioned myself to be.
I don’t have a blog so….
10 years ago I was in my first few weeks of University, getting to know new people and trying to find my feet in a big new world. I was living five hours drive from my family and alternatively loving and hating every minute of my new life.
20 years ago I was just starting a new school which was very different to my first one. The kids were older and came from more deprived areas and scared the life out of me. I was from a tiny, middle class village where kids were nice to each other. I moved to the suburbs where bullying was rife and telling tales got you in trouble with your peers. It was horrible for a year or so and then I made some good friends and sorted myself out.
30 years ago…..not even a twinkle in my parents eyes
Mine’s up!
It was rather scary to think that I could also go back 40 years…
Ok, I posted one. It was a challenge to be sure!
virus post>
Hope that link comes across ok.
I’ll just paste the whole thing in another comment if it turns out wonky.
I posted on my blog. Good idea and nice to not be a survey for once. =)
http://www.hawkinsquared.blogspot.com
I’m in… http://myspace.com/cre8ted2worship
It’s nice to know I’m not the only one who thought 145 was fat. Sheesh, what I wouldn’t give for that now, or at least the ability to appreciate it if I had it, or even that plus 20 pounds. ANYWAY – what an amazing life you’ve lived so far . . . very cool.
I played!
Okay, I didn’t play. I wrote out the dates on a piece of paper and couldn’t come up with anything too exciting during those years. Of course, my memory is terrible and I may be pleasantly surprised if I’d haul my journals out and look back at those years in my life.
Blessings,
Tammy ~@~
This was fun, Mel. Thanks for passing it along. My post is up.
I played along over at my blog.
Cheri