Wednesday, December 8, 2010

Shedding the old, embracing the new

I have been thinking a huge amount lately about change.  I am in a transition phase of my life as I complete my Honours Bachelor of Arts in Spanish from the University of Guelph.  I can hardly believe that I have finished this degree!  It has been a beautiful and fulfilling 5 and a half years...I am almost a different person than I was when I began.

In many ways of course I am the same:  still a single mother of four beautiful children, still a Canadian woman, still a linguist by nature and focus, and still a lover of gourmet coffee.  And in many ways I have changed and grown:  I am more self-confident, more aware of my skills and attributes as compared to those of my peers, and far better prepared to face the challenge of supporting myself and my family.  I think I have finally gotten over the culture shock that accompanied me like a pair of invisible tinted glasses for the first 5 years of my life back in my home country after 17 years as an ex-pat in Mexico, Guatemala and France. 

Culture shock is a strange concept.  It took me quite some time to understand that I would probably have experienced a pretty severe culture shock if I had left rural PEI and come straight to Southern Ontario, without leaving the country at all!  Oh Canada, so huge and so diverse!  In lovely Guelph I have finally found a place where I feel like I belong.  My peripatetic upbringing meant that I had never lived in the same place for longer than 5 years, and indeed, had spent 1 year or less in most of the 20 or so places we had lived when I was growing up.  My amazing and weird childhood has made me into the resilient adult I am today, but I have always longed for roots, and now I finally feel like I have put some down.  It's a pleasure to see my children cycle through the schools as they get older, and though we have moved across the river, this means that now that some of them are in high school they have rediscovered old friends they had not seen since primary school.  The oldest friends I am in contact with are the ones I met as a 12-year-old...no kindergarten friends for me :(

On the other hand, I have friends in BC and PEI, in France, the U.S., Mexico and Guatemala, and a lot of wonderful friends here in Guelph.  Life is good!

I am really looking forward to stretching my wings as a writer now that I have a little more free time.  Here's to the blessing of literacy!