I moved to Alberta 12 years ago but before that I had lived in Martensville, a small town just north of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. I have two sisters living in Saskatoon so I usually take a trip there at least once a year.
This year while I was there, my oldest granddaughter drove up from Regina to visit over the weekend. We started talking about Martensville and I was surprised at how much she remembered about it as she had only been about nine years old when I moved.
One of the things she remembered was going over to the neighbour’s house to play with their grandchildren. I asked her if she would like to go visit them and she was all for it, so we made plans to go the next day.
Driving into town the next day, we were shocked at how much it had grown. When I left there had been one fastfood place, an A&W, a grocery store, a bank, a restaurant, a dollar store, a gas station and not much else.
Now they had all the fast food places from Tim Horton’s to Taco Time, a big Canadian Tire store, and all sorts of other businesses.
Nana’s Blog There was even a traffic light at the intersection coming into town.
The new community centre was huge. There were so many new residential streets and crescents that we got ourselves a little bit lost until we finally found our way to the old part of town and our old street.
We parked in front of our old neighbour’s house and walked up her driveway. We stood there looking at our old house. The outside looked very much the same. It still had the pale yellow siding that we had put on about 20 years ago, the only thing they had changed on the house, that we could see, was the sliding patio doors were now glass French doors.
The white picket fence that we had put across the front of the yard and down to the house was still there.
My granddaughter said she didn’t remember that big spruce tree in the front yard. I told her that was because it had only been about two feet high the last time she saw it.
Looking at that old house and thinking of the days when I had lived there, I suddenly realized that the town was not the only thing that had changed. I had changed too, I was not the same person I had been when I lived in that little yellow house.
Sometimes you have to look at where you have been before you can see how far you have come.
by Lois Perepelitz
