Dealing with change, by kicking and screaming

Change is inevitable.It's not like I don't know this, but the point was driven home when I ran into Ms. Sara Mason at the store last week.

She told me that with the opening of the new school, she will be transferring and taking her children with her. Of course, she's not the only one moving. Mrs. Hanselman and others are leaving Sutro and going to Dayton Elementary and Karen Turner and others from DES are off to the new school.

Frankly, most of Mr. Greenburg's staff would have gone with him if they could, that's the kind of man he is.

"Just pull a bus in front of the school, load the staff and get on down the road," I joked with him (also at the store) recently.

See, in Dayton these past years, we've seen the changes.

On my first visit here 24 years ago, there was nothing but Old Town, a trailer park and endless vistas of sagebrush.

"Who would ever live in this place?" Trina, my best friend since high school, and I asked each other.

Well, apparently half the free world.

Then, many moons ago, Trina and her husband purchased the first house built on Keystone Drive.

We laugh about how Sam used to whine about his long commute from Dayton to Carson City, and how a herd of wild horses would, before they got their fence completed, come up and look in their sliding glass door.

"Boy have things changed," he says now.

Eventually, we lived 250 steps around the corner from Trina and Sam and my children have trick-or-treated the neighborhood since Emily, now 12, was 4 months old. When I moved four miles up the road, judging by Trina's reaction, you'd have thought I left for the moon.

Change.

About the store: no one in Dayton had a social life until Smith's went in. I'm not kidding! If you want to run into everyone you haven't seen in a year or catch up on all the latest community developments, go shopping.

One day prior to Christmas, I went to get last minute stuff for dinner.

Shopping: 30 minutes.

Catching up with everyone: Two-and-a-half hours.

We have more people, more traffic, more craziness and yet, Dayton still feels like home.

It's not like we didn't see the new school coming, or that small steps toward change in that department hadn't already been taken. About three years ago, the school zones were re-drawn, as Sutro had reached 2007 capacity.

Change happens, but this week, I'm having a hard time with it.

I think talking with Ms. Sara was so significant because she has been a constant in my children's lives since Emily, then 3, started preschool.

Through the years she provided child care for my children in her home, and then, when they began school, she was working as an aid at Sutro.

She and her children have just always been there.

Now they won't be.

Karen Turner taught Natalie in Early Childhood, beginning at age 3 and Mrs. Hanselman had both my girls for a year.

Now they won't be in their usual places.

I've gotten used to seeing certain faces at certain places. Used to knowing who's energy has gone into which events at a given school. Used to knowing who to call for what information.

Guess it'll be time to deal with all this change soon enough.

But for now, I'm on my living room floor having a tantrum about it.

I'll see you all after I release myself from a self-imposed time out.

• Karel Ancona-Henry can be reached by e-mail at kanconahenry@sierranevadamedia. com or at 246-4000.