"A Time To Plant, A Time To Uproot What Has Been Planted"

 

I love Pueblo.  I probably always will.  It was a wonderful place to grow up.  The sounds and scents from those days before and those days now intermingle in fond memory;  The locusts humming loudly, thunderously sometimes, high in the waving elms. The happy fast language of Mexican radio announcers streaming from neighborhood houses and cars driving down the road.  Ice cream truck's tinkling jangles through the suburbs. The smell of fresh baked Wonder Bread.  The odor of slag pouring out onto fresh ground. The scent of copious rain falling on asphalt and high desert dust.  The roar of high school football fans in Dutch Clark stadium on a clear fall night. These are the kinder bits of my home town. I have re-planted myself here in the hope that I might take some root. Alas, peace in Pueblo is elusive for me.  

My little house on the South Side is a haven from work.  A few friends and my family gather there frequently. My sister has talked me into acquiring a dog to "balance" my domestic bliss- a Great Pyr puppy who works on carefully and sometimes bloodily, negotiating his relationship with the real boss - Z the Turkish cat. We have barbeques in the yard, and sip wine under the massive trees that have probably been growing for 100 years. But my current job teaching middle schoolers does not fit easily into this a bucolic equation.  

I cast about, looking for another position. I send off applications and requests to move within the district... I want to be a Principal, but Pueblo can be quite cliquey and I don't know the right people, not to mention I have been somewhat a failure at my current position... though the kids will hug me and write me sweet endearing farewells at the end of the school year.  (How do they combine all that tough with all that sweet in one cumulative heart?)  

I begin sending out resumes, first expanding my search locally, Pueblo West, Colorado Springs, then widening the circle - Mukilteo, Seaside, Ocean Beach.  Nothing.  I pray.  I pray for the right thing. I pray to fit into the puzzle that is GOD's will. There is a job in Priest River... elementary principal. Priest River lies in 7B.... Bonner County Idaho...less than 50 miles from my daughter and 5 of my 7 grandchildren.  It is also much closer to my son in Oregon and my ex-husband... who has survived his stroke and whom I continue to fly to visit on occasion. It is a small rural town with a reputation not unlike most small rural towns in the west. Can I come for an interview? It is mid May.  I can combine a Mother's Day trip to my daughter's with an appointment with destiny perhaps. Yes, I can interview.

The process is nerve wracking. I stay in a hotel in nearby Sandpoint so I can prepare for two rounds of interviews, the first with a panel of district employees including the superintendent, and the second, an open forum interview with the community.  I text my son a picture of the front of the district office.  I think he asks if I am sure I know what I am doing.  Nope.  Just walking through an open door to see what happens. In the meantime I spend time with my precious daughter and her family. I've missed them so.                                                                              We take walks at City Beach and have a Mother's Day lunch at a pizza joint. I've missed this place I realize. Other than Pueblo, which I left at 18, I had lived in 7B almost as long, 16 years before moving overseas. I once had roots here. I'd raised boys here and midwifed a granddaughter into the world here, married here and divorced here. Here was not a bad place to land again if.... if the job was a fit.

                                                     

  

                                       
                     

I was in the plane, having just boarded my flight to Denver, then Pueblo when the call came.... DID I WANT THE POSITION? I panicked. I hadn't expected it to happen so fast.  I didn't know. Was I really ready to uproot again?  To drag my life back to Idaho? I answered that I needed time to think about it.  There had been three candidates and I was informed they needed an answer before the end of the day.  I asked the superintendent if I could have until I landed in Denver to give my answer. He agreed.  

The plane ride brings trepidation, much prayer, some tears.  What do I do?  What is best?  I beg for guidance and HIS will.  My mother is almost 90 and my sister looks after her... don't they need me?  But my kids and my grandkids and my dreams of finishing my educational career as an academic leader....I waffle, continue to ask GOD, but He is silent. The only thing that comes to my heart is again... the open door. We touch down in Denver. I make the call and accept the job.  I will be expected to start the second week of August. I stop in at an airport bar to have a drink, to slow the odd combo of hyperventilation and exhilaration before boarding my hopper flight back to Pueblo, to my sister who will have to be informed. The flight is tiny and I am asked to change my seat.  At first this confuses me because there are only about 5 seats on the plane and two are empty. I ask the attendant if I am being used as ballast ... he just smiles politely.

Ballast - 1.heavy material, such as gravel, sand, iron,or lead, placed low in a vessel to improve its stability.   "the hull had insufficient ballast"                                                                                                                              

Well, if I had enough weight to balance a plane, surely I would have enough weight to take the helm of a large elementary school and surely enough courage to be able to tell my sister that I had taken the job.  Surely....                                                                                                                                                                                 

  "... Surely goodness & mercy shall follow me all the days of my life....."