A Life of Yes
Some people collect things. Marian collects experiences and the people who come with them.
In ten years at Sierra Winds, the registered nurse, world traveler, and self-described small-town girl has served on the health committee, the library committee, the activities committee, and the residents council. She currently chairs the welcome committee and helps design the three large display windows at the entrance of the community. Six neighbors on her wing gather regularly for birthday celebrations, sharing snacks and brunch to mark each other’s milestones. She belongs to a book club. She has a view of the courtyard fountain from her outdoor deck.
She also has a rule she has lived by for decades: always say yes to travel – even though her cruising days are over… but you never know.
It has taken her far. And it brought her here.
From Hockey Town to the Texas Border
Marian grew up in Warroad, Minnesota, a small town of about 1,800 people on the Canadian border. It’s a company town where Marvin Windows is the biggest employer of many of its residents. You may know it as “Hockey Town USA.” Eight Olympic hockey players have come from Warroad, and the town ran on a window-manufacturing company that employed most of its residents. For Marian, those early years were idyllic. Relatives were close by. Kids roamed freely. Life moved at the pace of a place where everyone knows everyone.
Then her father’s job took the family in the opposite direction, all the way to El Paso, Texas, on the Mexican border. It was as far from Warroad as you could get. She finished high school there and went on to college for a nursing degree at the Methodist Hospital School of Nursing and Texas Tech in Lubbock.
She met her husband in 1956 at Reese Air Force Base. They married in 1957. “I went from one extreme to the other,” she says with a laugh, thinking of the leap from small-town Minnesota winters to the open desert of west Texas.
Forever a Nurse
Marian spent her career in nursing and wears that identity without reservation. “I am forever a nurse,” she says.
She worked at a private hospital in California while her husband completed his Electronic Engineering degree at Cal Poly, where the two of them and their growing family managed to do everything. She worked in San Luis Obispo, California, at a small private hospital where she did all kinds of nursing, from obstetrics to general surgery and medicine to trauma and emergency cases. Then she worked one year for the doctor who delivered her baby boy in 1962.
After graduation, the small family moved to Sacramento. When her two kids were in high school and college, she worked in general nursing for several physicians in family practice. Later, she served as assistant director at a privately owned home for adults and children with disabilities.
While the kids were still in school, they hosted three international exchange students, which helped broaden their global views even more. “We had a girl from Sweden who stayed 3 months, and a young man from Brazil, who stayed 6 months and then Brad from Sydney, Australia, stayed 1 year,” Marian remembers fondly.
The Australian student, she considers a second son. He accepted Christ in her home, and she has watched him grow into a man with a family of his own across the world. “It gave us a global perspective,” she says. It also gave her children one. “I feel that raising my children to be healthy, productive, educated, responsible adults was my proudest success.”
Once the kids were grown and had moved out, her husband’s electrical engineering career offered him a position in Stuttgart, Germany, installing a telephone system for the NATO countries during the Cold War. While there, they traveled extensively, and the kids came to visit.
An Ad in an Airline Magazine
The move to Arizona started the way some of the best decisions do — spontaneously. Marian and her husband spotted an ad in an in-flight magazine for Sun City West. They were empty nesters. They said, “Let’s go.”
They leased for a year, loved it, and bought a house. The climate, the golf, the healthcare, the clubs, the new friends…Arizona delivered on all of it. They lived there for nineteen years.
For twenty-two summers, Marian and her husband participated in the Summer Citizens Program at Utah State University in the cooler temps of Utah, living in student housing, taking classes, attending professional theater, and falling in love with opera. She made friends she still talks about. “I met opera,” Marian says, as if it were a person, and maybe, in a way, it was.
Her husband died in 2013. They had already chosen their apartment at Sierra Winds. They were getting ready to sign the papers when he passed. He never got to live in the place they had chosen together.
She gave herself time. Then she moved in December 2015.
The Right Size. The Right People. The Right Fit.
Marian and her husband had been looking at senior living options for a while before finding Sierra Winds. The West Valley felt right. Sierra Winds felt right. The sales staff was warm and genuine. The residents were friendly. It fit the budget. And it had an outdoor deck, perfect for overlooking and listening to the Sierra Winds fountain.
“We just couldn’t find the right fit anywhere else,” Marian says. “Here, we did.”
She dove in. The health committee. The library. The activities committee. Then the welcome committee, which quickly became her favorite. She helps with marketing and events, greets new residents, and works to make sure no one feels like a stranger for long. She served as vice chair and then chair of the Residents’ Council for two years.
She helps design the three display windows that greet visitors at the entrance of the community, sometimes showcasing seasonal themes, sometimes highlighting the achievements of residents themselves.
A New Family
Marian is clear-eyed about what this chapter of life holds. She has outlived her siblings and other relatives. Her family — two children, one granddaughter, two great-grandchildren, and a pair of grand dogs — is small but deeply connected.
Sierra Winds has become her extended family. She knows everyone in the community by name. She participates in an in-house Bible study that meets without her needing to leave the building. She has a West Valley Symphony subscription, a theater subscription, a small book club, and a standing willingness to say yes to a cruise.
“I have outlived my relatives, and this is my new family,” Marian says. “I have found such joy in actively finding joy for myself.”
She often thinks about the small town where she started…the freedom, the familiarity, the sense that everyone is known and held. She has found that again at Sierra Winds.
Without the snow shoveling, of course!
Her Advice: Don’t Wait
If Marian has one message for anyone considering a move to senior living, she does not hesitate.
“Don’t wait.”
She and her husband waited. His health declined just as they were beginning to look. He died before they could make the move they had planned together.
The Christmas letter she wrote to her children after moving in says it plainly: “This is the best gift you will ever receive. I have moved. You do not need to worry about my safety anymore.”
“Earlier is always better,” she says. “And when you get here, get involved. Life is right here. You just have to show up for it.”