W ~ Windham

These are the continuing adventures of a Swedish immigrant during her first year as an American. She boldly went where she'd never gone before...please come along on Adventures in America.

In Sweden we attended what was called a missionary church. It was evangelical, and far removed from the Lutheran (mostly dead) state churches. When we moved to Silver Spring, we had many denominations to choose from. The Nutritionist had grown up in a Presbyterian church, The Swede obviously in the missionary church, so what is a blended (in so many ways) family to do?

We picked the church closest to us. We chose First Baptist Church because we could walk there. It was about 4 blocks away, and on the street (big thoroughfare) that our house sat on the corner of. It was a VERY Baptist Church. The pastor was named Mr. Windham. The Swede was not fond of him or his preaching style, and many times would just leave when it came time for the sermon.

He used to joke that he was a blås-skinka, which is Swedish for blow-ham. Windham. Get it? He really did blow...not a good preacher, and the only thing that kept me awake is that Swissie and I started a church tradition of giving each other hand massages to stay awake. We got really good at it. If we got too fidgety, we had to stop. If we sat still long enough, The Nutritionist might give us a Tums. It's pretty pathetic when Tums are a treat, but we're talking Nutritionist and they didn't have sugar-free mints yet...as far as I recall.

The church wasn't all bad. We got very involved. I “sang” in the choir. I can't carry a tune if you strap it to my back. Every Wednesday they served dinner for a ridiculously low price, and that was after choir practice, so it was perfect. As a mom, wow, I would have been all over that. I used to not enjoy it so much though because a boy who had a crush on me would always sit with us and I just wanted to get away from him.

How did he get away with that? Well, they really did a good job streamlining this whole process. Butcher paper on the tables. As people arrived, they'd write their names on the paper reserving their seats. We would reserve our seats before choir practice which gave him plenty of time to find us and write HIS name down by ours. I tried not having to sit next to him, after all, there were five of us and surely someone else could be the victim. However, The Nutritionist was into manners and made me sit by him.

Of course, long after he was done with me, I got a crush on him...sigh. Timing.