A sad reality

Today the hubby and I are on our mini vaca. We will be until sunday. We drove to my second home, northern wisconsin. Ladysmith Wisconsin to be exact. I love it here for many reasons.  For one it is where I grew up, not literally, but emotionally. It is hard to explain. I had a hard time with a lot of things in my later high school years. Relating with my parents was probably numero uno. That was why I tried my darndest to go to a school as far as I could, but still like the school.  That is where Mount Senario College came in.  It was a small private school originally run by a group of nuns then later run as a non-faith based school.

The years at the mount truely shaped me into the person I am today. Crazy I know.  There are a couple of reasons. One I never connected with my born religion. I was catholic, went through the rituals of the catholic faith, went to a catholic high school, but again never felt a connection to continue in the faith.  I was lost in may ways coming to the mount.  I didn't have a faith or a higher power to beleive in.  I found Christ's love through some soul searching and some really good friends. People I still talk to to this day. I don't rely on them as I did in my early christian walk, but they are there if I need them.

Another thing was just the bond of people who I didnt know and who didn't know me when I started. Not a single other soul from my HS town came to the mount the year I did. I had a fresh start. A fresh start to be the person I wanted to be, more outgoing and more of a people person. I am still no where near being a people person, why away from general chatting as I feel I would look like a fool to the other person. But I did open up a ton more than I had before I went to the mount.

So today was very bittersweet for me. I have come to Ladysmith a few times in the years I left. But no other time than today did I long to have that college time back, to do it better the second time. I know we all wish at some point to redo a time in our lives.  It was very bittersweet to see the college the same but different.  The college has been closed for the most part for ten years. Yes a private high school was tried and failed and a college was tried and failed. So for the most part it has sat empty for the last tenish years. This year if houses the Fine Arts Center & Gallery, a satellite campus of some sort is trying to start and it houses some offices in what used to be called the blue wing (the prez's office and stuff). The college for the most part looks like it did when I went there.  Hubby and I peered into windows and saw desks and chairs in rows waiting to be used. We saw the caf with the remodeled kitchen due to a fire a year or two before they closed. We saw the chairs on tables. We saw something that didn't really surprise me, but defenatly saddened me to some degree. We saw the Library. There had been flooding issues in the school so the carpeting was torn out, but the bookcases were in the exact spot they were when I left. Sadder still all the bookcases still had the books on them. The card catalog center was still there and also the library checkout desk was still there. It looked like you could flick a light on and go back to business.  We also got the very surreal experience of being in the main class building.  That is where the FAC & Gallery was, inside the actual school building. I was pointing out all the little areas to hubby, saying "this was x, this was y, this was z"     It was the first time since I left the school that I had stood inside the school. The few times we came up north, the school was closed so there was no ability to see inside. The dorms had also been pretty run down when I came to visit. I was surprised that after our little walk around my old campus, we were getting ready to leave and a bus load of foreign exchange kids come off the buss and go into the dorms. Instead of having "host families" the city is using the dorms as housing. Smart!   I was impressed by how nice the campus was looking. But at the same time I was remembering that this really was a crappy school. Yes, I grew and developed but more in the emotional way through this school than in the educational side.  It was hard to see the bitter sweetness of it all.