We spent three years in St. Paul, Minnesota. My husband was posted there in 1984, moving us from
the Portland, OR area. Our son was just a
year old, and our daughter joined us the following year. I had taken our son's first
year off, but was ready to work again.
I found a part- time position: through a
private non-profit, I served as a counselor for two different large mainline
Protestant churches in neighboring communities. It was undoubtedly
the best job I had in that field: working with members of those congregations,
I could reach out to the ministers for any material needs that my clients had;
a special collection would be taken up anonymously, and a family received a wood
stove to heat their farmhouse, or transportation to doctors’ appointments, or
new school clothes for the kids. I never had another job that allowed me to
help people so simply. Of course I did this with my clients’ permission, and
quite confidentially.
One of the churches had members of modest means, the other
was more well- to- do. The latter gave
me the best work setting I have ever had: my office was just down the hall
from the sanctuary, where, on Wednesdays, the organist practiced. She was an extraordinary
musician, a member of an elite academy of church organists. I met with my
clients as she played Bach and Handel and Haydn. Not surprisingly, my clients
got better. Not surprisingly, my nerve endings also were brushed into blissful
composure.
The organist was a doctor’s wife, quite wealthy. She had a
beautiful home, and lovely, independent, self- confident children who were in
upper elementary school.
Also on staff was another musician, a younger woman who was
in the process of a divorce from her own doctor husband, who had left her for
his nurse. She had a toddler and a baby.
Her kids were the same ages as mine, and I know how she
struggled to get them into snowsuits and boots and mittens and hats and scarves,
and then in and out of her car to get them to childcare before she got to work.
Little people in slick snowsuits do not go easily into baby car seats.
Fastening them in is a chore, and somebody almost always kicks off a boot in
the process. Mom bends over with her
backside blocking the 40° below windchill as she props the baby up, adjusts the
buckles, replaces the boot—and goes through the reverse process when she
arrives at her destination. Hours later, she does it all over again to bring them home.
I understood this perfectly. We didn’t have a garage—used
block heaters to keep our cars drivable. That part I had a little worse than
she did, but she had the sadness and anger of an unwanted divorce… much more
painful.
One day she was lamenting a little—Minnesotans aren’t known
for complaining much. She described the ordeal of getting the kids ready that
morning, getting them to the babysitter, and she said, “I wish we lived in a
nicer climate.”
The well- heeled church organist looked a bit rapturous, and
said, “But wouldn’t you miss the change of seasons?” To my dismay, the younger woman said, wistfully, “Yeah, I guess so.”
Ever after that, when horrible weather descends upon us,
either Dale or I will say, in one of those coded messages that the long-
married share with each other, “ But wouldn’t you miss the change of seasons?”
Riiight….
© J M-K August 2016
© J M-K August 2016
