Further Notes from a Voluntary Exile

In my growing up days, evolution was a forbidden word and creation was seen as an instantaneous affair. Salvation worked the same way. At some fortuitous moment you got saved and that took care of matters forever. It took years for me to alter that mindset and realize that what was really essential was process, not productjourney, not destination. All of nature speaks to this becoming, this slow evolution that takes one from beginnings toward some largely unknown destination. My beginnings were in Mississippi. The first people and places and values that I met and cherished were the people, places, and values of Mississippi, and first impressions seem, somehow, to be the most lasting ones. Perhaps that's because childhood is the one time when life is most thoroughly experienced and absorbed. Children give themselves over completely to the business of living. Everything is new and different. Impressions soak into the very soul and leave indelible stains. Later, when one is busy with doing, living for the sheer wonder of watching and listening and feeling is lost. One is still impressed, but not indelibly. Also, each image is fleeting, rather than sustained, since life moves along at a faster pace. As a child I stayed in the same setting, watched the same people, the same scenes time after time. Other writers may not be so firmly tied to one region because their watching, listening, feeling years were spent in a variety of settings, while mine were spent solely in Mississippi. As a girlchild, I knew all about the Southern Belle image I was supposed to have. Yet I never quite managed to pull it off. First there was the problem of hair. Mine was the wrong color and had no curls. Like Jana, the protagonist in a short story I wrote several years ago, I was a tomboy whose hair was more often adorned by wisps of hay or pine needles than by velvet ribbons. The heart of that story is a flashback triggered by news of the death of Jana's Uncle Will, the one person in her life who has encouraged her to be herself, rather than the prim and proper Southern Belle the world expects her to be. The story ends when Jana, now a college student far from home, sits before her mirror, snipping away the hated curls, one by one. She has changed. She has come to question the old ideas and assumptions. And once that questioning has begun, Jana can never be the same again. So it is with all of us. The South I grew up in was strict and explicit in its mores-spiritual, social, and sexual. Certain ideas, actions, and attitudes were appropriate, while others were not. And what was appropriate was seldom negotiable. Every little girl growing up in Mississippi knew that she was expected to be a little lady at all times. And all of us knew what little ladies could and could not do. The logic of this carefully guarded ladyhood is apparent. Theoretically, a little girl who grew up behaving like a lady would remain a virgin until marriage, become a perfect helpmeet to a worthy man, and raise children who would reflect the best aspects of the southern culture. Conversely, a little girl who was headstrong enough to break one part of the code of ladyhood was in imminent danger of slipping into the abyss. And since the example set by one rebellious girlchild could lead to the ruination of many, there was no room for compromise. Those who fell short might not be immediately punished, yet they knew wherein they had failed and suffered the hell of knowing they had never quite measured up. But the tyranny of appropriateness reached far beyond matters of everyday dress and decorum and into the world of religion. God moved in mysterious ways his wonders to perform. He not only managed to keep his separate

Evolution and Science Education · History