The Blue House is a memoir of a woman who grew up at the edge of the Canadian Prairies. For Myrna, “no woman is an island” and she attributes a, “life worth living” to the mentors along the way, as well as her combined parents’ Christian values. To Myrna, in today’s society, these values seem to be slipping away. Commitment, persistence, hard work, love and forgiveness, though harshly delivered by her father and lovingly delivered by her mother, were all part of Myrna’s early childhood. Please enjoy this excerpt and feel free to seeking the full book on Amazon:
Myrna was born in 1940 into a family of seventeen children in a remote area of Saskatchewan, Canada. Midway through my senior year, a friend fixed me up with a tall, blond college student named Jim. We dated for more than a year and had many wonderful times together. He frequently took me into the city, and on occasion we went to nightclubs, a popular thing to do in that era. We double-dated with my friend Joanne and her boyfriend, who planned to marry shortly after high school. Jim was my date for senior prom, and I was proud of my handsome escort. After the prom, we dined at a club called Chez Paris, and the well-known entertainer Tony Bennett performed that evening. It was an evening I have often recalled through the years, as Bennett was at the peak of his career, and the city of Chicago was glamorous and exciting to me. It seemed impossible that only a year or two earlier, I was living in the dusty little town of Wynyard, desperately hoping for an escape, knowing for certain that, if I remained, my future would be dim.
Life was good that first year in the United States. I had new and exciting friends, an aunt and uncle who nurtured me, and I was in love with an impressive boyfriend. I was close to my Aunt Elsie and I valued her opinions. An added plus was she adored Jim, whom she thought was a perfect match for me. He was a college student, handsome, blond and blue-eyed, respectful, and polite.
For me the timing was not right, however. I had greater aspirations than to marry out of high school, as most women did in that era. I wanted to continue to experience the excitement of a new country, a new city, and the world at large. By the time I had graduated from high school, I had a dream: a dream to become a flight attendant. I just needed to bide my time until I reached the age of twenty-one.
I began to distance myself from Jim, treating him poorly. For several weeks, for Jim, the writing was on the wall, as I showed little affection for him. I could sense his anxiety. When I received an early morning phone call from him, I knew I had to let go. I informed him that this would be the last contact we would have with each other. My aunt was crushed, even though she accepted my decision. For me, there was a great deal of relief.”
