Moving Day

                                                       Moving day

It’s moving day September 1974, no exclamation marks here, to show excitement. I am glum, bummed, sad, scared, and nervous. How is the day I have been dreading for months here already? I feel like my life is over, no exaggeration. My life as I know it is over.

How am I in this terrible predicament you wonder? It started with the oh so familiar telephone call. Out of the blue my parents receive a call from my grandparents who live in this tiny village in the country in the province of Ontario in Canada. My grandfather has suffered a heart attack.

We immediately pack up to make the four-hour drive to see him. He has survived the event but he has a long recovery and cannot continue to operate the villages grocery and butcher shop which he owns.

We are so happy to see he is alive and recovering. There do seem to be a lot of discussions happening though, that start with “can you kids please go play?”  I am curious but not too worried about this UNTIL we return home and several weeks later my parents sit us down for a talk.

The talk involves earth shattering, doomsday news for me. We are moving to this little country village!!! Have my parents lost their minds?? Is it April Fool’s Day? What are they even talking about?? It turns out that they have decided to take over the operation of my grandfather’s business and they are going to just demolish my life to do it!!

We live in the biggest busiest city in Ontario. I was born here; my life is here. My school, teachers, dance, sports, clubs and most of all my FRIENDS are all here!!  Now I have a good imagination but even my imagination is not good enough to wrap my head around this outrageous idea.

Let me set the stage , this village is surrounded by farms and cornfields. There are 200 people that live here!! That is, it. I think the term that is used for such a place is that this is the “boonies”. I actually thought that the corn silos on the farms were full of bananas!! I am a city girl and that is the end of discussion. I feel a deep sadness and a fiery anger battling each other to take over as my main emotion. I feel like I am in some sappy tear jerker TV movie, not actually experiencing this in real life.

No pleading, crying or begging changed this plan. I mean even our neighbors were in shock!! My friends and I plotted for hours, days, weeks on how to sabotage this plan.

But here we are, it is moving day, nothing worked to smash this plan to pieces. It is hard not to hate my parents at this moment, but I can see they are very emotional and sad too. We all have friends here.

The whole neighborhood had a huge party last night. It made this move from hell even worse. We already knew we had the best friends and neighbors anywhere but here they were showing us yet again what we would be missing! My parents begged them not to be around when the moving truck came in the morning. I think it was because we were such emotional wrecks, and I also think my parents were worried about a huge scene and possibly me taking off. Believe me it is on my mind as an option.

The transport arrived, the biggest truck you can get. I cannot breathe, I am choking on my tears and I cannot stop shaking. I shut my eyes in the hopes that I can be transported away from this soul crushing scene. All of our earthly belongings are being loaded in the truck.

The absolute worst part of all, is that all of our friends not just from the neighborhood but from the other parts of our life in this wonderful city are here. I cannot stand the despair that feels like a blanket over me. I cannot see anyone through my tears. You might think I am an angst filled drama queen but every word of this is true-oh how I wish it was not.

The truck is finally loaded and we are in our car following it. Following it to our new life. A life I have no perspective on. How does one make new friends, start a new school, live in the country with the nearest city half an hour away? Do I act as myself or do I invent a new me? Will I fit in; do I even want to fit in?

This town has two grocery stores, a restaurant, a gas station, two schools; an elementary school and one high school, two churches, a fairground and a post office. It also has an arena and a baseball diamond. I guess that is something. But it is literally surrounded by fields… you are smack in the middle of the nowhere.

Our house is even on the outskirts of the village, you have to walk a mile to get to the school and the stores!! There is definitely no public transportation in a village such as this.

I am sure that anyone who has made such a huge change in their life especially as a new teen has known the type of pain and fear I am trying to share. And let’s face it being a new teen is a weird enough experience on its own.

We are here now … in the tiny village. If there is something, anything good about this move and the dreaded first day of school it is that my parents grew up in this area and they know EVERYONE!! We are not strangers here as I had feared we would be. Everyone is so happy to have us here.

We have been enveloped in acceptance and welcome. I believe every kid my age and even some who were not, has stopped in to the house to say Hi. They have shown me around the village, including all the fun spots they go to get away from the adults!! Wow they are trusting me with their special spots already, this is really something isn’t it??

These kids aren’t all that bad. They actually seem kind of fun. The thing that shocks me the most is how much there is to do here. There is a club for everything I could imagine wanting or not wanting to do.  

You know, I am here now, this is my life, there is no going back no matter how much I want to transport myself back to my life in the big city, my life before this little place. I have to give this a try, I have to see what my life can be here, I have no choice.

Once I made the decision to see what this place could be for me, I was calmer and had a determination I had been completely lacking during this move. I was determined to be the best me I could be and see what happens.

Well, I am happy to report that this little village has become my home. I have friends here, tons of friends. I have friends from the village and the surrounding farm area. I have the best teachers I have ever had. I like my house and my huge yard, we have space …tons of space to explore woods, and creeks and fields. I play baseball, broomball (a weird sport I never knew about that is played on ice) and I am taking horseback riding lessons!!! My dad says I might be able to get my own horse some day!!! I am on the student council and I am a Girl Guide.

Every day after school I walk to the restaurant that sits right in the middle of the “four corners” that is the main intersection of town. My friend’s mom makes us French fries in the restaurant fryer and we hang out and sometimes do our homework. I mean does it get any better than that??

Well, I guess it does... because I really embraced the country lifestyle when I became the proud owner of my very own real farm animal. My Dad surprised us with a baby calf that we named Annabelle. We kept her at the farm just up the lane from us. My responsibilities included cleaning out the stall and grooming Annabelle. She was the best-looking calf on the block!  I will not talk about how one day when she had grown quite a bit, I was told that she had to” go away” because she was at “that age”. It was weird when we couldn’t go visit her don’t you think??

Anyway, on a good note, all that grooming led my parents to finally take heed of my pleas for my own horse. I soon became an ecstatic horse owner. This was a new dream of mine since my big move and my new riding lessons but this dream became an obsession, it took over my thoughts all day every day until it actually happened!!! My Dad and his friends, with my help of course built a little red barn right on our property. My horse was named Flicka and we became inseparable. I even rode her into town to get our mail at the post office... now that is something the big city girl I once was could never do!!!

What I have learned after this experience is that change is scary, especially change that is out of your hands. People make decisions every day with no idea how they will turn out. I am beyond grateful that my parents’ decision turned out to be the absolute best one for our family. Maybe they had a crystal ball that we knew nothing about but whatever it was that guided this leap of faith it became a life of adventure, learning, happiness and belonging for all of us.

In hindsight I guess there was a real country girl in me after all. To be honest I cannot imagine living or being happier anywhere else.