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" . . . to arrive where we started and to know the place for the first time.” —T. S. Eliot When I was a child listening in on adult debates, often about controversial church issues, I believed that when I grew up I would know the answers. Where this stubborn conviction came from is hard to imagine, since there always seemed to be unsettled and perplexing matters constantly worrying the grownups. Eventually I would find consolation in accepting, as someone has said, that “living is a form of not being sure.” This account is really an exploration of many questions, but one which bows down to the mystery of the ordinary yielding to the extraordinary. How does a farm girl, whose parents had little opportunity for education and whose community proscribed a very limited role for women and distrusted education, end up a university president? This was not a matter of career or vocation. Growing up in a Mennonite family, I did not know women who had career goals. I never had any. Instead, I have been overtaken by other questions regarding providence, destiny, calling, luck, fortuities and convergences. I am still surprised by the glimpses every now and then of how these forces call us out of and beyond ourselves. I also discovered through the writing how important remembering is in creating the self, as I considered the strange twists and turns of a life which is both unremarkable and unexpected. Memory takes on a life of its own, weaving threads of connection between knowing and not knowing. Remembering that childhood ache of uncertainty and the desperate desire to have things settled, to know, is a memory more precious than painful. I would eventually figure out that lives are shaped not only by how we pursue the future but by how we consolidate fragments of the past; by what we remember and what we forget; by the stories we are told and by the stories we tell. It is necessary to recognize at the outset
that memory is not reliable or that, as Czeslaw Milosz concludes, “The
past is inaccurate.” All memories are partial, selective, and shimmer
through the refractions of time, the mind’s balkiness and the soul’s
defenses. In remembering the past, particularly childhood events, I
have attempted to be truthful to the power of memory as well as
respectful of the facts. I have taken some liberties in the narrative
of imagining the backdrop of times and places, attempting to reassemble
reasonable particulars that would enlighten the question of why a
certain memory has such a hold on me. But I have to concede, as W. S.
Di Piero has observed, that to some extent “remembering is an act of
the imagination.” This story, which begins with a place—a farm and a church—represents a personal journey of discovery; an attempt to uncover those pivotal forces which are never fully understood in constructing a life. At the same time, I take responsibility for the shape of the story, acknowledging that this is more about a search than a recounting of simple facts. Extended family members would no doubt have their own version of the “facts,” and their variations might very well be more accurate. What I know is that a particular fact rarely
stands on its own; it is seen through the prism of a many-faceted
reality; it depends on point of view. This is made startlingly clear
when in family conversations, for example, we discover that our older
daughter remembers a particular childhood incident very differently
than the younger, prompting good-humored teasing about what could have
created such a skewed memory. And, while childhood memories are family
affairs, I am convinced that they serve as private negotiations on the
way to becoming a self. Thus this account represents one particular
storyline, with a very few names and locations changed to respect
individual privacy. My hope in telling this story is that I will honor
those who have loved me and have taught me. Finally, this is not simply
an account of the past but rather the tracing of a trajectory which
reaches into unknown territory, which stretches toward the future. At
the center of it all is the timeless present worked out through
everyday rhythms of hunger and fullness, of sun and wind and rain, of
light and darkness, of inexorable and unreasoned joy, of discontent and
gratitude. —Lee Snyder |
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