The arrival of each new year causes me to reminisce. I define my life in blocks of time, each segment identified by the year that marked the beginning of change and new opportunities to learn or grow.
The year 1936 set the pattern for the rest of my life. We crossed the Atlantic by ship, continued by train to Alberta, and completed the trip by horse-drawn wagon. Four miles of straight, dirt roads, took us to a farmstead situated on a coulee bank. The wagon stopped beside a two-story, frame house. A barn, chicken house, and long shed bordered the rest of the farmyard. I looked for neighbouring houses, saw only empty fields, and burst into tears. Mother took my hand and said, “Come and see the house, your new home.”
There I felt poverty, witnessed mental illness, and experienced perilous weather. But New Year’s Eve of 1943 found me in another house in London, Ontario reviewing the year just ending. I remembered the musty smell of seasoned boards that brother Harry and I had nailed to the windows of the old farm house. I recalled the drive to the station in the neighbour’s ’28 Chevy and the three-day rail journey eastward. In London, I adapted to busy roads, huge towering trees, a city school, and another house. Shaken by all the change, I clung to the radio where I could escape from the real world into a land of adventure and fantasy.
Various other years marked major changes in my life. In 1946, we returned west where brother Harry tried but failed to become a teenage farmer. In 1949, we made a disastrous move to Kelowna, B.C., and soon returned to London. Each change added a new layer of learning and growth to my life.
The next year, while still only 16, I started work in a radio shop. Every day my boss took time to teach me the trade and the management of a small business. He insisted I begin a course of study by correspondence, launching me on a lifetime of continued learning.
More events slipped by, each marked by a specific year: my marriage to Anna, the start of my business, becoming a father, and then a change of direction and off to college. Two years in the pastorate followed by a return to secular work became important milestones on the road through life.
Then Africa. In 1971 the heat of the African day had fled with the setting sun – the gentle coolness felt like a pleasant summer evening anywhere in the world. Walking homeward in December of 1972 in South Africa, I thought of this strange place to which we had moved. Here summer came with the new year and winter arrived in July and August. We drove on the left. White people spoke English with a strange accent, or in a Dutch dialect called Afrikaans. Black people switched easily between any number of languages.
We made adjustments in geography and culture without much difficulty, but found ourselves rejecting the laws of apartheid which divided the people. We had moved into a world sharply defined as either black or white. I had begun an adventure that would change my life more than any other previous or later experience. When that time ended, life continued on with new challenges.
Each of life’s experiences presents us with opportunities to learn and grow, regardless of the decade or year that marks our lives.
During 2009, may life overwhelm you with joy and adventure, imprinting a positive pattern on your body, mind and soul.