Actually, learning had always been a major priority in my family.  Growing up, if you were reading a book, you didn't have to help with the housework.  Somehow, I always managed to be reading a book.   The Bobbsey Twins, then Nancy Drew, and every series that was ever published.  The classics were next.  The only time I wasn't reading was when it was raining and I couldn't get to the library.  If it hadn't been for rain, I most probably wouldn't have learned to do anything useful.

So enrolling in college was expected.  My grandmother and grandfather were farmers.  They neither one had a high school education, but all five of their children finished a college degree.  Four teachers and an engineer.  I can't imagine how difficult this was back in the early nineteen hundreds in Oklahoma.

This all seems irrelevant, but I only want you to know that everyone  in my family was disappointed that I got married and started  family instead of starting college.  So when I finally started, everyone was pleased.  "What are you going to study?"

If you are going to attempt coursework at that level, you ought to have a plan.  I didn't.  I just kept enrolling in classes from 9 till 3.  My counselor tried to get me to follow a degree plan, but it didn't fit my time schedule.  Once they paid for the tuition, I just took.....whatever.  It worked for me.  I was "going to college," so the pressure was off.

Every story has a beginning.  Mine starts in the middle--Vietnam--and goes forward and backward. Backward can wait until another day.  Forward is a story--about how I became interested in Genesis. You probably can't really just start a story without background, so maybe there isn't a way to start in the middle after all.  So this will be a middle-muddle kind of story.

When I was 18 I married a Marine fighter pilot whom my mother approved of (which was fairly critical in our family) and my father dearly loved.  They knew him.  I didn't.  It turned out to be the best decision of my life, but that's also another story.  Ten years later, he was six months  away from retirement when the Marine Corps deployed him for thirteen months to Chu Lai.  Combat.  Hanoi Hilton was a real possibility.  Most residents were pilots.  Some of them were friends.  So much for retirement.

After nine years of marriage and four children, I was alone again--which was normal everyday fare for any Marine fighter pilot's wife--if the MC wanted you to have a wife, they would have issued you one. Every morning the kids were off to school.  Then what?   Just how long can you entertain yourself with washing, dusting, making beds and folding clothes?  So, I enrolled in college--something I had promised my mom I would do nine years earlier. A big condition which Ken and I agreed upon when my parents gave their blessing.  Kind of.  At the time I didn't have any interest in college.  And I hadn't exactly said "When."

He left in November of '66.  By May of 67 I couldn't seem to fill my days with enough stuff to do. For the first time college seemed attractive.  I took three courses that summer, made A's, and was offered a full tuition scholarship.  So I enrolled that fall and took every course they offered from 9 to 3.  That allowed me to see my children off to school and welcome them home every day.

Each day had been a count down: 382, 381, 380,.........42, 41, 40...and he was still alive.  Maybe  God in his mercy was going to get us through this war that never should have happened.   Maybe God in his mercy was going to let Ken come home alive and not in a box.