Transitions

I like to run in the morning when the world is just turning from night to day. On a day not too long ago, I was having such a run and there was also the feeling of misting just before a rain. The air was fresh and clean and it had the wonderful feeling of spring – the first day of spring. Ah March – a time a wonderful transition. It made me reflect on the many important transitions that had occurred for me in March and caused me to think about the nature of transitions.

Some are wonderful, some not so wonderful. Some are planned and predictable – changes that you invite, marriage for example. Others are not. They come as a surprise or as a part of circumstances that you can’t control, like a move or an illness. Some like a child going on a mission are predictable in the event but unpredictable in our response to it. When some are happening, you know something is happening and it is important but it is not until after – sometimes years after, that you recognize how whatever it was that changed, changed your life. It is about these that I will focus on.

My first big March transition happened when I was eight. My family moved from living in Lethbridge to living in Scandia. I had adjusted well to Lethbridge. I was taking ballet and piano lessons. I was good at both and had won an award for the most promising dancer. I went swimming in the outdoor pool and skated in the indoor arena or on Henderson lake. I had learned how to ride an adult sized bicycle and could ride by myself to Gordies Grocery and buy 1cent bubble dubble bubble gum. I could go to movies Saturday afternoon, riding the city bus and could enjoy the only building that had air conditioning.

I had lots of Mormon friends and I loved going to Primary. The chapel was new and spacious. I got an award for being the best student in Sunday School class. I was baptized with about 20 other kids. It was the baby boom and I was in Mormon southern Alberta. My school was a brand new school where the desks matched the floor tiles (pink and green or yellow and grey). My teacher, Mrs Leonard, was young and beautiful and I felt that she liked me especially. The most important thing was that I felt like my friends really liked me and that I was kind of the centre of any threesome that happened.

When we moved to Scandia everything changed. The first day of school made that clear. Jenny Lind School had four rooms with grades from 1-12. I was in the 1-3 grade class. My teacher, Mrs Narum was old and her first comment to me that I remember was about my report card. With my classmates standing around she said how terrible it was to give a child so many high marks on a report card. Three students were my age. I don’t remember very much except being surrounded by them on the Monday of the second week and challenged about the fact that I didn’t go to church. I said I did and they said I didn’t. You see they went to three different churches – Lutheran, United and Catholic and I wasn’t at any of them. I told them I was Mormon and I had gone to church. It was clear to me that I was different and I had to figure out how to fit in.

There was no roads to ride bikes on, no easy circle of friends, no swimming pool and church was in the school in Rainier. Luckily there was one other girl at church – Merle Caldwell. The following year three communities amalgamated their schools and Merle and I went to school together. Years later when my manager at Alberta found out that I was Mormon, he thought that it must have been good training for being a consultant because I must be used to being on the outside of every group. He was pretty much right. Our family was pretty much on the outside because of being Mormon.

The next big March transition happened when I was 16. It was the month that my mother had her first and very serious heart attack. It was classic – 5 years after menopause. She was 55 years of age. I was going to High School in Brooks and was very very busy. I was on student’s council, on the Social Committee. We were responsible for planning dances and the fashion show. I was on the Intramural Council and intramurals were big – some kind of activity every day and often on week ends. I was the Stoney house league leader and we won the participation award at the end of the year for the most people participating. I had learned really well how to drag people out to things. I was in drama, on the volley ball, badminton and track teams and had one boyfriend after another. I had figured out flirting. I stayed in town frequently with all of my activities including once a week for Young Women’s (MIA or Mutual). I didn’t do much homework but I pretty much only took what was easy for me anyway.

My Father had spent a couple of weeks in the hospital in Lethbridge getting the tendon in his thumb reattached. It had been severed while castrating a calf the summer before. Herb was at home but Mom did a lot of the chores that Dad had done. She lifted bales and carried 12 , 5 gallon buckets of grain to feed the animals. I have no memory of what happened about her actual attack. Either I have blocked it out or it was not something that anyone talked about and I was wasn’t home. In fact I have no memory of her hospital stay.

When she came home of course, she was to do nothing but rest. That was so hard on my mother – work had been what she did and who she was. She had taken care of us all. No one asked me, but I could see that the house was up to me now. Week-ends were hard work – washing the clothes in a wringer washer and hanging them on a line. Cleaning the whole house including the stove and washing and waxing the floor on hands and knees. There was ironing on Sunday and making Sunday dinner. I wanted to take care of everything I could so that Mom wouldn’t feel so bad. She was so sick and getting up to eat often made her cry. I didn’t know what else to do but do the work to show her I loved her. Now I wish I would have taken some time to talk to her or read to her but then I didn’t know about doing those kinds of things.

It was a hard time and things never really went back to how they had been. She was always sick – always did too much and got sicker. Her quality of life just continued to deteriorate until her final heart attack 12 years later. She never did adjust to a limited capacity and all I could do was try to work faster and harder so she would have less to do. I saw how sick she would be after my sisters and their families came to visit. After I was married, I would try so hard to make our visits as easy as possible on her – making the meals, cleaning the house etc.

The next March transition that I want to talk about was the move to Calgary from Edmonton. Financially we were in serious trouble. My consulting business was flat after two fairly abundant years. Andy had moved to a job in the non profit sector that he enjoyed but pay was not covering the mortgage. We had marriages, missions and university to help pay for. In short there was a lot more money going out than was coming in and we needed out.

A job sort of fell from heaven but it meant moving from Edmonton. We had to leave our beautiful big wonderful house on the park. I had to leave my very very good and close friends – Ruth, Laura, Brenda and Sue. As painful as this all was, the worst part was we had to leave family. Sam and Gillian had already left home, on missions. Gillian was married. It was leaving Greg that was almost unbearably difficult. He was my baby boy and was still in High School. He had been the one who had taken care of me when I was sick with Anne. The bond with him was different and emotional and he wasn’t ready to leave. He wasn’t moving on to begin his life as an adult at school or on a mission. It just wasn’t the right time but there was nothing to be done. We had to go and it is impossible to describe how hard this was. And Calgary.... Well everything was different. That is what change is about. Of course it is different.

When I compare the three stories there is much to reflect on. I have learned a lot from all three situations. I think I am a stronger and more sensitive person because I experienced the injustice of discrimination as a child. I had responsibilities in our branch of the church at a very early age that strengthened by testimony and my understanding of consecration. I experienced the freedom of rural life and the simple pleasures that are a part of that.

I certainly was under no delusion of what it meant to be a wife and mother when I got married, as a result of my mother’s illness. I grew up at a young age in relation to that learning. I can’t say that all of my learning about taking so much responsibility has been an entirely good thing however, for myself or others. The process of unlearning some of this has been hard and will likely last the rest of my life.

The last transition feels like the hardest. I could reason that so much was lost – family, house, traditions, and even identity. I think there is more to it than that, though. The older we get, the more we get locked into expectations and build a comfortable world for ourselves. Change brings crisis and the requirement for new ways of seeing things, new ways of being. When we have worked hard to build the best life possible, this seems so unnecessary and unfair.

The very nature of transition is that we are in a “neutral zone” as William Bridges says. We don’t really know what will be different and how it will all turn out in the end. The simple directive is to walk by faith. That is very difficult when so much of our experience as adults is that it is up to us. How do we balance faith with our own responsibility? How do we keep our selves open to change at the same time we are trying to get some stability. Perhaps that is just all about the paradox - like the more I know the less I know or the "last shall be first and the first shall be last". There are no easy answers just always more questions and with the speed of change there will be more and more opportunities to test hypotheses.