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Change is in the wind

By PAT WICK

© Another Day in the Country

Change is something I've never dealt well with — ever since I was a child. I usually liked my circumstances and wanted them to stay the same; but they didn't. I can barely remember when we moved away from Ramona and the safe haven of my grandparents. And then moving became a way of life. Dad was a preacher, moving from one congregation, one evangelistic series to another for the rest of my childhood. Change was in the wind and I could smell it coming like a summer storm.

When Jess and I decided to move from California back to Ramona, we longed for change — thirsted for it like cold, tart, lemonade when it's 102 in the shade. After we'd been here for a year, my daughter called one day and said, "Weren't we going to talk about this as a family before anybody made such drastic long-term changes?"

Our little neighbor, Emily, is changing. She just had her 14th birthday and she has more on her mind than hanging out with Pat and Jess. She walks down the streets of Ramona plugged into her music, oblivious to the rest of the world — oblivious to me (which makes me sad) — but she's taking her boredom elsewhere these days, not to my front porch. She's a teenager and things are changing!

We often wondered what would happen here in Ramona when we lived here instead of just vacationed here. It's a change. Our haven of solitude, where every move was an adventure, is now our work place with a never-ending to-do list.

I've got a porch full of plants that are in transition. Like Em, they are about to launch into the world from the safe little greenhouse environment, stacked together like kindergartners in the bus; but they've got to move on — those little greenhouse pots are way too small and they've got to put down roots. Perhaps I'll get them in the ground today and it will rain (please, please) to make their shift a little easier.

Several months ago we bought another house in Ramona — it used to belong to our friend Erich — and the past few weeks we've been renovating again. We're trying to decide the purpose of this house which we've now christened "The Bungalow." Will Jessica live in it and finally have a home of her own? Will we add it to our list of guest houses and have enough sleeping room for a family of 25 to come to Ramona for reunion? "I can't decide," says Jessica. "This change is unsettling."

Meanwhile Jessica has been sleeping over at Mom's house to ease her asthma, during the cold winter months, wondering if she should stay there in that posh bedroom or make some other change? Her cat, who we call "Pooky," is reacting to all this change. He can't go inside at Mom's. He isn't really happy at the Ramona House with me. He follows Jessica to the office but isn't happy there — he even followed her to the parish hall when we were getting ready for the Mother's Day Tea. He sits on the porch at Cousin's Corner, but he doesn't like it there either when there aren't any guests. He's just roving around wishing things hadn't changed!

Jess is making lists of what furniture has to be moved from one house to another — we have cousins coming in for family reunion and Uncle Hank's memorial this weekend. "Trundle from Jake's to the Bungalow," and then she started abbreviating, "Dbl. bd from B to J. Couch, chr and rkr from GA (Green Acres) to B. Qn Bd from RH (Ramona House) to B, rkr from CC (Cousin's Corner) to B, rkr from GA to CC, drssr from RH to B." This change is exhausting.

There was a change in plans yesterday when my new baby chicks arrived a day early. Miss Clucky, who's been living in the Playhouse, is about to be moved over to the Chicken House at Mom's. Her eight babies are now teenagers and yesterday when I was giving them scraps, one tried to crow. Clucky could not quite believe her ears, either! Her chicks were born on April 4 and surely they're not old enough to be crowing! But one was! (We hope only one, or we'll be having rooster wars, again.) The new babies will be going into Clucky's quarters. Right now they are in a big box beside the dining room table — not quite sure of this strange environment — and without the vaguest notion of what grand changes are coming next in their life.

It's another day in the country, maybe the chicks are the lucky ones, content to just take one day at a time, trusting that their food and water will be sure, overseen by a benevolent caretaker who looms over them periodically from the heavens above. On the other hand, they'd be worried if they knew my track record with chickens.

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