Memoir Monday--the constant of change

I missed a week. Last week was hectic and involved a four day trip to Arizona to handle some family (Walton side) business which is still not completed.  I got back home Friday, tired and in a state of semi-shock as I learned things I had no idea about and totally did not expect. How this all will ultimately resolve is not yet in my crystal ball's view. I often think that is the story of my life!

Last time I talked about back-to-school memories. This time I trace a parallel theme which also ties in with this idea of sudden and unexpected changes and revelations. The summer of 1966 was a difficult one. My dad's health was caving in and there were many issues with the horses and mules about which my life had been centered for several years.  The wild idea of leaving home and starting college lingered on the far horizon but I did not believe it would happen. I rode and led, shoveled and fed, worried and went on, head down and mostly very tired to the depths of my spirit. It was a discouraging period.

Then suddenly the unexpected happeend.   All at once the wheel spun 180 degrees and in a week everything was different.  I was accepted for admission at NAU (Northern Arizona University) and got a combination of a scholarship and grants which would pay my full costs for the first year at least. So on September 8, I was duly delivered with the bulk of my worldly possessions to my future dorm, Morton Hall, on the northeast part of campus. Within a couple of days I went from cowboy girl to college coed. Talk about a shock!

I signed up for my first semester classes, got a meal ticket at the cafeteria across from my dorm, survived one brief weird roommate and then got another very calm one, and began classes--back to studying for the first time in four years. It really felt as if one life had ended and another began in which I had been born at age 23, somewhere in actuality between about 15 and 35. I suppose it is a good thing I have always adaptable and rather independent. For the first year I did go home one or two weekends a month so I still saw the animals, did a few chores and watched in sorrow as things deteriorated yet farther on that front.

I had to learn to 'comparmentalize' and do a bit of Roman riding with a foot on each of two charging steeds. I worried about keeping my grades up, whether or not I could still do academic things--perhaps that was needless. "Book learning," so long as I stay clear of a few subjects my mind simply does not encompass, has never been a big challenge. I did well that semester and the next; no worries on earning and keeping the critical financial aid.(Whew)

That's just one example of the strange and surprising trip that my life--at least this current life!--has been. I suspect it repeats some of my past lives in that paradigm as well. Although I am sure I have never been anyone famous or important, I do think I have always been in the middle of tumult and violence, catastrophes and brief calms, having to adjust, learn, grow and change, many, many times. Somehow the lessons all that is to impart have not quite solidified yet. Until I 'get it right' eventually, perhaps I am fated to go on this way. Well, it beats being bored to tears!

In the computer crash earlier this summer I lost most of my college photos and have not yet gotten around to trying to have the hard drive repaired or salvaged but I did find a few, mostly ones I had posted on Facebook the last year or two. Some were also right here on this blog, so I will share a couple.

Before--one way some 1500 days
had been spent

And after, in Morton Hall; I was packing here
but unpacking would have been similar