Bad Grades and A Surprise

A low C? How was this possible? What was I doing wrong? My academic advisor had said that anatomy would be a hard class for a freshman, but with my interest in the subject, I was sure I would do well. I knew all the bones in the body, but really did poorly on the part of the first exam about muscles. I thought the Latin I took in high school would get me through, but obviously much more studying was needed. It was early in the semester, and the grades in my all other classes were A’s and B’s. Even one C was going to be totally unacceptable to Mother. I decided to tell her it was my hardest class and promise to study more earnestly. Mother believed in me, so I had to believe in myself!

That darned World Series was going to make it hard to concentrate for part of October, but there was plenty of time to recover after that. Miss Camp, coach of the Seals, said she would help me study for the next anatomy test. I really wanted to get the Red Cross First Aid Instructor certification the university offered. I thought that would allow me to work at a higher paying job when I went back to teach swimming in Des Moines the next summer. That little brown Red Cross book went with me everywhere; I read it and re-read it. I studied all the anatomy diagrams, copied the drawings in my notebook, and even slept with the darn thing under my pillow. I wrote to Burnie what I was trying to accomplish and explained that I hoped the extra knowledge would also help me raise my summer paychecks. When he wrote back about that was when I realized I was not really thinking quite straight. He asked me who I was going to live with in Des Moines during the summer.

I had not thought about that. I had not connected the fact that I wanted to work at the pool in Des Moines again, and with Mr. Ashby at the newspaper, but my family did not live there anymore. It hit me like a brick. Where would I live? If I lived in Steamboat Rock, the only place to swim was in Pine Lake. I never heard of them offering swimming lessons or first aid classes there. Where would I go when school was out for the summer?

Mother was not the one to bother with this dilemma, as she was still trying to get the new house finished and settle in. However, I had to talk to her about it before I could discuss it with Burnie. He, of course, immediately offered to let me stay at his house and I am quite sure that he had not even asked his parents. I know they would say I’d be more than welcome, but it seemed like I would be abandoning my mother.

She always wrote to me about how she wished she could give me a hug and a kiss, how much she missed me, and how she could not wait until I came home for Thanksgiving. She never tried to make me feel guilty and I was sure her affectionate expressions were not intended to do that, but I could not help feeling pangs of guilt. I missed her as well and told her so in my letters to her.

Her letters smelled like the cookies I always got when I went to Aunt Helen’s house. Mother was living there while the new house was being built, so that made sense. The thought even occurred to me that she wrote the letters in the kitchen on purpose, so that I would get homesick for those cookies. When I told wrote Mother of my suspicion, she wrote back that my very active imagination was to blame, but I don’t think it was my imagination at all.

Swimming with the Seals was much more work than I had planned. Afterwards, I was often too exhausted to give my backstroke laps the full measure of effort they warranted. By the time I got back to the dormitory for dinner, I was frequently too drained to go eat. That’s when Dot would sneak back a little bit of food for me from the dining hall. They had rules about taking food out of the dining hall, so usually it was something like a roll with a chunk of meatloaf shoved into the middle of it, and sometimes just a few pieces of cheese and a piece of fruit. She never let me go without dinner, bless her heart. If there was a cookie to grab, I always got one of those, also.

I kept going, just thinking about making it to Thanksgiving. Our Seals Club meets would not begin until after the holidays in December. I just had to keep studying, swimming, and get through another three and one-half weeks until I could go home for a break. It was Halloween Eve when the fateful letter from my old newspaper buddy Ted Ashby arrived.