This morning started at 5:00. I awoke to the loud, persistent meowing of the cat. He was downstairs. I got up to see why he was upset. He could have been lonely, or hungry, or confused that his regular humans were gone. By coming downstairs to talk to him and give him some food I was alleviating the first two possible causes. I talked to him as I gave him some treats and I rubbed his head as he sat eating the food I’d scooped into his bowl. Then I squeezed past him on the fifth stair of the spiral staircase and went back to bed. I was asleep again almost instantly.

The next thing I knew the radio in the master bedroom was on, telling me the news was next at 6:30. I padded down the hallway and turned it off. The radio came on yesterday too. I had turned it off by pushing the first button I had seen. I was concerned that I had merely turned it off, that I hadn’t done what was necessary to keep it from coming on again, and I was right. But I figured it was a foolproof way to get me up in the morning, so I didn’t fiddle with it. Once the radio was off I got dressed and fed the horses. I thought about crawling back in bed but the cat wanted company so I stayed up.

As I sat over a cup of tea I thought about being back in the place I had grown up. It is always interesting coming back to this part of the world, to see what has changed and what hasn’t. Yesterday afternoon I took Mom to an open house to celebrate the 90th birthday of a woman who was a neighbour of ours when we were growing up. She hadn’t changed at all. I recognized her right away. We wished her a happy birthday and Mom gave her the flowers she had bought. While Mom chatted with her, I introduced myself to her daughters, although that wasn’t  needed, they knew who I was.

As I was chatting I looked around the room. I recognized a few of the faces there. The lady of the hour got up to cut the cake and so I was released from the conversation. I wandered over to look at the photo display. A gentleman peered into my face and took my hand. He said he should know me but he wasn’t sure who I was. When I told him my name he squeezed my hand and laughed. He said I was the girl who had stumped him twice, as he recalled he hadn’t been able to remember my name at my sister’s Christmas party either. I told him it was okay, that not seeing me for years it was expected that he wouldn’t remember my name. Still holding my hand he said he remembered my face though, that I was familiar. We chatted a bit, about how we can remember faces but not names. He had been a teacher too and we reminisced about how we might not remember the names of all the kids who walked though our classroom doors, but we always recognize them as one of ours.

There were other people at the open house who recognized me, probably because I was with Mom. They knew I had to be one of her daughters who lived away. Mom and I stayed and chatted for a bit, then we said our good-byes. The open house was at “The Manor”, an old folks home in downtown Fruitvale that was where the old primary school had been. As we drove away Mom and I talked about that old building. I could see it in my head;  the big windows, the wide steps leading up to the front door, the huge trees we would run around. We talked about the teachers there. I remember all of my teachers from there and a couple of ones I didn’t have. It was fun to share those memories with Mom.

As I sit here at the kitchen table in my sister’s house, in the mountains above the small town I grew up in, I realize my face may be familiar to some of the people here, just as their faces are familiar to me. But I am not the same girl I once was and they are not the people I knew. Hell, I’m not the same person I was five years ago. However, the experiences here in my hometown and the people I used to know helped shape the person I am today. Here is where I started; where my first opinions were formed, where I first decided what was right for me and what was wrong, where I realized who I wanted to be like and who I vowed I would never be like, where my feet were placed on the path that led me to today. Nothing is constant except change and that is never more obvious than when you go back to where it all started. And that is also the only place where someone will call you a girl when you’re well over 50 because to them you still are.

I have to move my car so Mom can get her car out. She has an appointment with her hairdresser soon. While she’s gone I’ll brush the hay out of my hair and get ready for today’s adventure. But whatever we do and wherever we go, we’ll have to be back by 6:30 to do our evening chores. Ahh, the inflexible demands of country living; something I must remember when I wax poetically about the fresh mountain air, the starry night sky, the unhurried lifestyle – that and the lack of a good sushi restaurant.