Each time I drive by the Harrison Cemetery on Highway 75, I wonder why my friend, Sandy, died in her forties while I’m enjoying my eighties. I’ve watched our children and our grandchildren grow up and become successful adults while she missed out on so much. I know I’m not responsible for my friend’s life. In fact, I’m not sure I’m even in charge of my own.
We are each created differently and don’t know what lies ahead. As I look around at the folks I’ve known for years, I’m amazed at how everyone has changed and the ways we’ve each remained the same.
While my generation was growing up, one of the highlights of summer was having a travelling carnival spend a long weekend in our village. Besides the thrill rides, cotton candy and games of chance, there always was a Gypsy fortuneteller. If our parents would have allowed my teenage friends and me to enter her tent and have our futures told, we would have laughed if the woman had accurately predicted the life each of those country girls would lead. We would have agreed her prophecies were impossible. But times change and people change with them.
After I married a farmer, I sewed several, shirt-waist dresses to wear while I cared for our three, small children just like the housewives and mothers portrayed on TV. In the fifties, society sought to put every girl into the same box. Not all women fit–I was one of them. I was overjoyed when my husband left the farm and became a county deputy. It was serendipity that I found my calling as a writer. Looking back, I believe the life I’ve led so far has been right for me.
Has your life been right for you?
Maybe we all think we are different, but Janice and I WERE different when we grew up in the Orfordville community. We didn’t get pregnant out of wedlock; we studied with plans for college, we didn’t drink, and we didn’t smoke. That should be enough.
However, I have continued to be different by having four husbands. I would never have thought that would be part of my plan, but I haven’t wanted to be alone, and God took two husband’s from me.
In a way, my whole life has been different since I experienced the Army wife’s experience for 17 years; I have two college degrees; I have been a college professor’s wife for 9 years; then a career Federal Employees companion & wife for 22 1/2 years; & now a factory workers wife for almost 5 years — a wide variety of experiences. I’ve had to bend & change.