Is Change Good or Bad?

 By Courtney Pierce

I’m always amazed by people who forge kindergarten friendships that last into retirement. Kids who grow up together share all those important rites of passage: first kisses, proms, graduations, first cars, marriage, kids, careers, upsizing, and finally downsizing. Life-long relationships provide a buffer of comradery to weather the emotional effects of change.

I had a different experience. 

Change was my friend. Every four or five years, our family moved to a different state in order to support my father’s career. I didn’t progress through elementary, junior high, and high school with the same set of friends. In fact, my family moved from New Jersey to California at the conclusion of my junior year. I didn’t even flinch about spending my senior year in a new high school located over three thousand miles away. I was excited about it.

There were upsides to all my early life changes. Every move allowed me to reinvent myself. The "new me” became quite comfortable with going in cold to meet people. After all, no change would last forever and held no long-term risk. My new friends had no pre-conceived notions about who I was. They never saw me in my kid years with goofy pigtails, zits, white go-go boots, or bad sixties hippie fashion.

My long career in the Broadway entertainment industry fanned the flame of change. Every two or three years, the company would go through a restructure, a merger, or an acquisition. New responsibilities, new people, new processes, and a new title graced the freshly printed stationery and business cards. I was transferred to Minneapolis for four years, and then transferred to Houston. Wow! I felt like a polar bear in a hot tub after that move. I welcomed all of it with open arms, but many of the staff had emotional difficulties with the transitions. Some people's comfort zones require everything to remain predictable and routine.

So much change had a downside too. Forging long-term friendships became quite difficult. I would engage people with limited access to the layers of me. Going deeper required an investment in longevity. Hence, I was equally comfortable being a loner or part of a group—two different sides. And when it came time to move again, the physical and emotional distance dissipated ties over time.

The protective bubble I’d perfected is now coming in handy, or maybe backfiring as the case may be. My husband and I are old enough now to be losing people from our lives, not emotionally but physically. Our elder family members are all in their eighties and nineties. Being from a small town, my husband is one of those with life-long friends, a few recently lost or battling illness. Just this past week, I lost my aunt at the age of 88. My uncle at 93 is in the process of giving up. The dominoes of change are falling in a different direction. How will it feel for us baby boomers to become orphans? Jeff and I long ago lost our fathers, but the tethers remain tight to our mothers. We both get a bit jumpy when the phone rings late at night.

The only thing we can control is our state of mind. No better example of this is the recent transformation of my Mom (the great fictional Ellen Dushane of the The Dushane Sisters Trilogy) at the ripe age of 87. After a six month wait, she got a new start when I flew to Oregon to help her acquire a companion--a Maine Coon kitten. 

This kitten, named Sally, has rendered my Mom twenty years younger. She laughs endlessly about Sally’s antics and no longer complains about the lack of geriatric healthcare (she’s right about that!). Mom’s aches, pains, and complaints have magically disappeared. I think it’s because she’s getting to be a Mom again, even if it’s to mother a kitten who's tearing her pristine house apart. My heart soars at the lilt in her voice.

I'm convinced that emotions play a major role in our physical health.

Now that my husband and I are settled in for our retirement in Montana, I need to recalibrate my thirst for change. I'm done with relocating. Now I have a long list of house projects: writing, the garden, landscaping, new inside paint, and divesting of “stuff” for others to appreciate. How many flower vases does one really need? I must have fifteen and use only the same three.

While I work through my to-do list, a new book is emerging. Current world events have allowed me to incorporate deeper spiritual meaning into Big Sky Talk. The real-life battle of good versus evil is taking place throughout the world, and the outcome by year's end will affect stories for the next hundred years. Massive changes are in store for our planet, which will inspire us to look back at history with new eyes. Who knew all those ground-breaking sci-fi, fantasy, and espionage movies over the past fifty years held so much truth?

It's time to re-watch a few classics with fresh popcorn: Contact, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Signs, The Matrix, Lord of the Rings, Conspiracy Theory, and Independence Day. Oh . . . we can't forget The Manchurian Candidate, Soylent Green, Fahrenheit 451, The Day the Earth Stood Still, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Hmmm...in War of the Worlds, our natural human immunity becomes the greatest weapon against the Martian invaders. H.G. Wells first serialized that story in 1897. What did he know that we didn't?

If that's not enough change for a junkie like me, then I can always tootle down to the bank and turn in our giant Tupperware tub of change.

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer living in Kalispell, Montana with her husband and stepdaughter. She writes for the baby boomer audience. She spent 28 years as an executive in the entertainment industry and used her time in a theater seat to create stories that are filled with heart, humor, and mystery. She studied craft and storytelling at the Attic Institute and has completed the Hawthorne Fellows Program for writing and publishing. Active in the writing community, Courtney is a board member of the Northwest Independent Writers Association and on the Advisory Council of the Independent Publishing Resource Center. She is a member of Willamette Writers, Pacific Northwest Writers Association, and Authors of the Flathead. The Executrix received the Library Journal Self-E recommendation seal.

Print and E-books are available through most major online retailers, including Amazon.com.

Check out all of Courtney's books: 

courtney-pierce.com and windtreepress.com 

New York Times best-selling author Karen Karbo says, "Courtney Pierce spins a madcap tale of family grudges, sisterly love, unexpected romance, mysterious mobsters and dog love. Reading Indigo Lake is like drinking champagne with a chaser of Mountain Dew. Pure Delight."

Coming in 2022!

When Aubrey Cenderon moves to Montana after the death of her father, the peace and quiet of Big Sky Country becomes complicated with a knock on the door from the sheriff. An injured grizzly bear is on the loose and it must be eliminated before it kills again. The sheriff's insistence that she buy a gun for protection will present Aubrey with some serious soul-searching, because the grizzly-on-the-run is hunting her too . . . for a different reason.