We had just moved here from Huntington, WV where I had gone to school for most of my first three years of elementary. It was the middle of the school year, in Winter. We lived right on the beach in a group of eight apartments. We lived above our cousin and her two daughters in Norfolk, VA just about a mile up from where the Hampton Roads Tunnel began.
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It was difficult for me adjusting to the new school. It was more of a military style school and we caught the bus early in the morning while it was still dark, whereas, in Huntington my twin sister and I walked about six or seven blocks to school and had breakfast before beginning the day.
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My twin sister was placed in a class with my cousin and felt, finally, redeemed after being placed three straight years in Mrs. Stump's class back in Huntington. We all had to meet in the auditorium before school started and hear our Principal talk to the student body. I believe this is where my stomach problems began, the stress of this was almost unbearable. And as soon as he gave the prompt, we were all off to our respective classes. Steph and Haley sat together, and although I was surrounded by my classmates I felt a hundred miles away from everyone.
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I was placed in the advanced reading group in this class. And instead of feeling like it was a high achievement, somehow, it didn't connect with me that way and I thought I had been punished. So the teacher sat with me and talked with me about why I was crying and she decided to put me back in the regular reading class. The math homework left me and my twin sister sitting for hours at our dining room table. Neither our mother or our neighbor across the hall, Heidi, was able to help us with the algebra-like math problems. We sat there until way after our mother left for her night job at the club on the naval base, promising her we would go down to our cousin's house after we finished, which would sometimes be late into the evening.
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Our mother and our cousin who both had been baptized as Jehovah's Witnesses were making an attempt to get reinstated as both had been disfellowshipped when I was about four or five years old. And so we sometimes went to the Kingdom Hall with our cousin and her two daughters.
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I'll never forget her face, the way she ran up to me at the Circuit Assembly, at the same coliseum our cousins had gone to see The Jackson 5 in concert. I forget her name, but she was African American and she was my age and in my class at school. She yelled out my name and said "I didn't know you're one of Jehovah's Witnesses!?" We embraced and we smiled from ear to ear. Finally, I had been redeemed. I had a friend in my class that I could get close to. Someone who knew me.
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Not very long after that day. My friend came running up to me in our class with the teacher following close behind her. She was somewhat frantic and said all of a sudden "Kimberly, isn't the world going to end in 1975!?" I was speechless. I looked at her and at the teacher. Every eye in the classroom was on me. There was a moment of silence. It seemed like everything changed to slow motion. What had I missed these few years absent from the Kingdom Hall. I couldn't believe what I had just heard. "I don't know." And then all of a sudden the teacher grabbed her arm and my arm and shook both of us and said, "The world IS NOT going to end in 1975!"
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I don't remember much about the rest of the time in this class. It seemed like my friend's heart had been broken. And I was in somewhat of a dissociated fog most of the rest of the days here. My only concern most days was running out of the class at 3:00PM to make sure I got on the right school bus to meet my twin sister and my cousins.
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1975 came and went. My mother had been reinstated by this time, only we had moved to Oklahoma to live with my older half-brother who had decided to leave the army as a conscientious objector. He had started training to be a medic in the army and was on his way to becoming a doctor. His conscience wouldn't allow him to continue to stay in the army. He was learning to live in peace with his neighbor and truly wanted to beat his swords into ploughshares. So he and my mother got reinstated at the Kingdom Hall in Lawton, Oklahoma. My oldest half-brother had the same feelings and after his son was born left Germany and came home to West Virginia. This brief period of time, honestly, felt like paradise for my family. I believe it is one of the only periods where we were all happy. The congregation in Oklahoma was like our family. My older half-sister and her daughter, who was only about two years old at this time was living there, too. But, like I said, it was a very brief period of bliss. For very difficult times set in for every one of us. But the world didn't end. It kept on going. Sometimes being a little more forgiving to each of us and sometimes very unforgiving.
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I think the only time the world has come to an end was when the flood covered the whole earth during the time Noah walked the earth. And I believe in the bible and believe the story of the flood. I also believe the promise God made right after the flood when God understood man's inclination is bad from the youth up and promised to never again bring the earth to ruin, even giving us a sign of this promise.
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Lately, though, I've been doubting even the authenticity of the bible and have questioned for the first time in my life who wrote it. Perhaps some selfish perverse aliens from somewhere else in our universe who inhabited this planet with only one goal: to dominate women and keep uneducated persons in ignorance.
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I didn't even learn about the Mayan prophecy until recently through my sister who heard about it through a very good, loving and trusting source. And, incidentally, my oldest half-brother bought the DVD, 2012, for me and my twin sister to watch with him before he died of cancer in 2011. I researched it some on google, but found it difficult to understand, except that there are solar flares that almost reach the earth as the sun expands to its greatest mass and width, and the gravitational pull this effect has, which could cause the earth to do almost a 180 degree flip flop.
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And so, I don't know. Anymore than I knew back in third grade. I only know of God's unconditional love and presence in my life. I know of God's unconditional love of every single person on this planet, that God desires no one to be destroyed and that God is not far off from any one of us. God even knows when one sparrow falls from the sky. God knows how many hairs each of us have on our head. And God has named every one of the stars in the heavens. I've experienced this kind of God in my life, when I was a child and felt all alone many times, and I've experienced this kind of God as an adult, when I've come face to face with death, lost loved ones and in my normal day to day life.
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Whether or not the world ends this month is not my biggest concern. I have learned to let go of things that I have no control over. I know that if I did have control I wouldn't cause innocent persons to lose their life. I would make it alright for every single suffering person. I would fly to Uganda and talk to the President about my brothers and sisters who are being threatened with life imprisonment and death sentences, just for loving someone of their same gender. I would then fly to Israel, right into Gaza and talk with the President there and ask him why? Why is it beyond his ability to give the Palestinians a piece of the promised land? Wasn't the land given back to the Jewish settlers when they escaped the worse plight of their life in the death camps in Germany? And then I would fly back to my home in West Virginia and try to make peace with my family and see my loved ones who I haven't beared to see for so long because of my own feelings of inadequacy. And I would then fly back to New York and make peace with the only person I have ever loved in all my life with all my heart and I would ask her to marry me. I think, then, I would feel worthy enough of her love and it wouldn't matter to me if the world ended or not, because I would know that I had done everything in my power to keep it from ending.
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