Uprooted - Story #4 of 52
It's said that there are big moments in one's life that forever changes the course of your story; events or decisions that, without them, you wouldn't be the person you are. For me, one of those moments happened in the summer of 1974. I was fifteen and our family took our annual road trip from B.C. to Saskatchewan to visit our grandparents and other relatives who lived there. I had always looked forward to these trips as they were a reprieve from the boredom most teens go through in the summertime and I really enjoyed the slower pace of life in Saskatchewan. Both sets of grandparents lived in very small towns so we, as the city kids, thought it was a great adventure to explore all of the places that were so different from where we lived. After those summer visits we’d always go home feeling like we’d done something special. We’d be tanned, have the occasional scabbed-over knee or elbow and had lots of wonderful memories of swimming, riding horses and bumming around. But that summer turned out to be very different from the others because we never went back to B.C. We never went home.
I’m still not sure if it had been planned all along - even before we left on that trip - but it came as a complete shock to my siblings and me when Mom and Dad said we needed to find a place to live before school started in a few weeks. I was completely blindsided. We hadn’t brought more than our clothes for a short vacation. All of my earthly possessions were back home, in my bedroom, and I hadn’t gotten to say goodbye to my best friend. Would I ever see her again? (I never did). I was supposed to start Grade Ten in September and felt like I’d just been teleported from one life to another, leaving behind all that was familiar. I felt adrift and lost. To be ripped from everything that was normal was bad at any age but for me, at fifteen, it was life changing.
The houses we looked at were pretty run-down but after having lived in trailers most of my life they almost felt like a step-up. One was on an abandoned acerage a few miles from town and, I was relieved when our parents decided it wasn’t the best option as we only had one family vehicle and dad needed it to get to work which was usually several miles away and he’d be gone for days at a time. They finally settled on an old two-storey house in Midale, Sask and we got moved in before school started. I can’t remember where we got the furnishings from or if Mom and Dad went back to BC and moved our belongings. I guess I wasn’t too concerned about that. I was more worried about starting grade ten in a new school. Coming from a grade 8 to 10 school that had over four hundred kids to one that was K-12 and had a total of about two hundred students was a culture shock, to say the least.
Looking back now, I have to say that that sudden move probably changed the course of my life for the better. During my grade eight and nine years in B.C. I had started hanging out with the wrong crowd - easy to do when you’re shy, not very confident, a bit of a loner but yearning to fit in. My school grades, which had always been a source of great pride for me, had slipped from honor student status to mostly C’s. I started smoking and skipping classes. I even took part in shoplifting one time though it scared the hell out of me and I never, ever, did anything like that again. I was goofing off at school and disrespecting my teachers. Everything I was doing was totally out of character for me and, honestly, I did feel bad about doing it but my need to be accepted outweighed everything else.
But, in small-town Midale, in my class of eighteen kids, it was like I was given the chance to start over; to erase that budding emergence of my “bad” side, and become someone new; someone better. No one knew me so they had no expectations of who I should be. I tried harder in school again. I started writing again. I learned how to play volleyball (though I didn’t really like it), how to curl (it was considered an old-man’s sport in B.C. but I loved it), and began to feel as though I belonged to something bigger than me. I joined the Yearbook committee. I got a job at the local cafe. I enjoyed hanging out with friends on weekends. Yes, we drank beer and smoked and cruised up and down Main street for hours on end but, compared to where I had come from, that was all just innocent youthfulness. When I graduated, it was an entire day devoted to us and our achievements that was celebrated by the whole community. I felt safe.
Although our parents divorced not long after we moved, being in a small community allowed our mom to continue to work close to home without worrying about leaving her three children unattended. Everyone around us - our friend’s parents, the business owners, our teachers and coaches - all kept an eye on us. Word travelled fast in a small town and we always knew, if we did something we weren’t supposed to - it would get back to mom quickly.
I went on to marry a local guy, enjoyed life on a farm, and we raised our kids in that same community that had given me back my identity at a time in my life when I was on the verge of losing it. That summer move probably saved me and gave me a life far different, but better, than what I would have had.
I’ve never been back to Prince George in the forty-five years since that summer we left on vacation but I did finally go back to B.C. in 2014. The minute I stepped off the plane and smelled that air (so different from the air in the Prairies), and saw those pine trees looming over me, a feeling of dejavu hit me hard. It was as though a part of me that had been missing finally clicked into place. I had grown up there. Most of my earliest memories; our vagabond life; my love of nature and exploring, the hard times and the good times, had all been abandoned there when we were uprooted. There had always been a feeling inside me of things left undone. It was true, that Midale had given me a life but going back to B.C. had finally allowed me a sense of closure to that chapter of my story and I could finally close the book.
Sometimes, the things we think are the most difficult and challenging can turn out to be exactly what we need at the time. I have to be thankful for that sudden move to Saskatchewan the summer I was fifteen. I’m not sure where I’d be or how different my life would have been if we would have stayed in B.C. but I have learned to trust that things will always turn out the way they’re meant to and that everything happens for a reason. The mountains and pine trees will always feel like home to me but the prairies gave me my roots and stability.