Weightless

I did something I’ve never done before. I booked a one-hour time slot to experience a float tank and what is called “Floatation Therapy.” Why? Life is a relentless rush, steams of light and fury, full of intrusions and distractions and constantly DOING. I was open—searching?—for a relaxing, therapeutic experience to calm my rapidly firing nervous system. Additionally, full disclosure: I booked an appointment at No.9 North Float Centre and Wellness Spa in Peterborough because I know the owner, and I wanted to support her small business.

I went into the experience with zero expectations; I didn’t anticipate how fully the immersion would be into dreamy wakefulness; did not expect the euphoric sense of calm and peacefulness that I walked away with. In other words, floatation therapy bordered on being a religious experience for me—a communion with the sacred— and you’re hearing back from the converted.

What is a Float Tank and What are the Benefits?

I’ll give you my non-technical description. A float tank is a huge tank (laying on my back, I could stretch out my limbs in both directions and barely touch the walls) filled to about knee height with a briny water. The water is heated to near body temperature. The tub is enclosed, making it a tank, with a door that you can easily push open. But once that door closes, there is an absence of sound and light, a sort of sensory deprivation.

According to WebMD, here are some of the health benefits, including relaxation, migraine relief, stress relief and detoxification, as well as improved sleep:

“The main benefit of using a sensory deprivation tank is to ease mental anxiety and muscle tension. Due to how buoyant the Epsom salt and water solution is, you can fully relax all of your muscles when floating. This is similar to experiencing zero gravity.

Floating in a tank can also relieve migraines and provide stress relief and detoxification since Epsom salts are high in magnesium, which can remove harmful substances such as free radicals from your body.

Free radicals are small particles that can damage your cells and increase inflammation, resulting in the development of conditions such as cancer and autoimmune disorders.‌

Magnesium can also promote bone and heart health, and even improve insulin sensitivity, which can help prevent diabetes.”

I didn’t know, specifically, about any of these studied health benefits before I booked my appointment, but here is my honest take on the experience (and why you should try it!)

My Floatation Therapy Experience:

Cleanliness is important to me, especially when my skin is going to soak in somebody else’s tub for an hour. The entire process was sanitary and clean. Earplugs were provided to block the water from getting into my ears. I was in my own private sparkling room that contained the tub and a shower for pre- and post-rinsing, as well as soap products to use. I was provided with clean flipflops, fresh towels and a robe for afterwards. You can wear a bathing suit if you want, but I decided to strip down for the full constriction-free experience (and I recommend this.) There is a light inside the tank, but it’s only used to bring you back at the end. Yes, I did say bring you back, because the sensation I felt by about halfway in was that of being elsewhere, in a dreamlike meditative state.

First Impressions:

Closing the door to the tank was a bit scary at first, because it’s completely DARK, and you’re naked, and the surroundings are unfamiliar. I was extra cautious not to get the salty water in my eyes when I first laid back, but once I got myself in the star fish position, I began to relax.

The first thing I noticed, once I got beyond the absence of light, was the tickling sensation of the salt. If you’ve ever been in the salty ocean, you know that salt can burn or leave the skin with an itchy sensation. I tried to resist the slight itchiness, which is also, in part, my own itchiness at being still. Eventually, I succumb to the sensation and any discomfort from the salt content fell away. I stopped noticing the physicality of my body.

The next demon to content with was muscle soreness in my neck. I had done a strength workout that morning that involved overhead presses with heavy weights and push ups, and my neck and shoulders were unhappy. When I first laid back, my head felt too heavy, like I was going to sink down too low, and so I initially put both my hands behind my head to cradle my cranium for extra support. But around the time I accepted the itchiness of the salt content in the water, I realized my neck pain wasn’t just lessened but gone completely. If you’ve ever experienced muscle soreness, I cannot recommend floatation therapy enough. In speaking to another friend afterwards, she mentioned a friend of hers with chronic backpain finally achieved relief in this way.

The Squirrels of the Mind:

And so once I’d dealt with the squirrels of the physical: itchy skin and body aches, all that was left to contend with were the squirrels of the mind, chasing their own tails.

Thankfully, I am a person who likes being in her own company—ha! And so I floated there, like resting on a bed of Jello, occasionally dropping my arms and legs down into the thick water, like slicing through butter, making slight movements to keep myself entertained, like a slow motion water dance, and I let go of all sense of time. I was told the Spa manager would knock when my time was up. That did not stop my brain from saying: I wonder how long I’ve been here? Has it been 20 minutes? 5 minutes? 40 minutes? Will I hear him knock? Of course I’ll hear him knock. I wonder what he’s doing out there right now? I wonder what other people do in here? Look, I can feel the wall. Here’s the top, here’s the bottom. There’s a side, and the other side. What’s the best way to pass the time…how long has it been? And on and on and on…until eventually, I stopped caring, and I felt a sort of tingling sensation all over, and I thought of being in the womb, and I felt held and cared for. I experienced an overwhelming sense of wellbeing. I was also overjoyed at the idea of having an hour to myself, a complete hour, where no husband or animal or child or phone would ding at me, demanding my attention. I don’t think I realized how completely trained and owned I am by my phone.

Book a Full Hour:

The dark and quiet held me there, suspended, and the sensation of joy, peacefulness, and relaxation inside me was deep and complete. The Spa manager commented beforehand, “Some people can get claustrophobic.” But I did not feel that once. He also told me that “an hour is a long time for a beginning,” but I’m really glad I booked an hour because it took me a while to get over my squirrel brain and shut the noise from the outside world out.

Probably by halfway into the experience, I stopped feeling anything at all, and experienced a sort of weightlessness. How good it feels to be carried in this way without placing a burden on anyone else.

Altered State of Consciousness:

At the end of the hour, I did hear the Spa Manager’s gentle knock on the door outside my room, but the sound came from far away. Simultaneously, a gentle light came on inside the tank and filled my eyelids with a sort of peach brightness. I hadn’t been sleeping, exactly, but the sensation then was of waking up. I woke from a dreamlike state, and I was sorry for the experience to be over, while simultaneously grateful to have found myself coming back from somewhere. My body tingled, radiated, in a pleasant way. I stepped out of the tank. Turned on the warm shower. And tried to process where I went in that headspace. An ‘altered state of consciousness’ may come the closest to finding the right words.

Helpful Tips from the Converted:

Don’t touch your face or your eyes once your hands have gone in the salty water! And wear the ear plugs. Salt water can burn. When you first get inside, leave the door open for a minute or two and trace your hand along the edge of the tub to get your bearings. Close your eyes. Use the floatation head ring to support your head and neck. Make the time your own.

Be gentle with yourself if it takes a while for the squirrel brain to settle in its nest. And then, simply, let go.

How To Skip A Stone

How to Skip a Stone

Thoughts on Writing & Teaching Creative Writing

My family once spent a magical week at a cottage in Amberley Beach, doing almost nothing. It was springtime—the water too cold to swim. The two big kids were smaller, and our baby was a toddler. I say I did “almost nothing” because the one thing I did do was read voraciously, as though a day unfolded by turning pages. The other thing I did do was spend time hanging out with my family. Around sunset, we would walk along the Lake Huron shoreline as the sun melted into the horizon and dissolved into a pool of glass. The water, come sunset, became subdued, almost reverent and obedient to the disappearing sun as if this might be the last day—this could be it.

We walked and talked and somewhere along the way, Dan stooped over to pick up a stone, which he then skipped across the water in a graceful arc. I joined him. The lake was quiet, only the gentlest mewl, like a kitten lapping milk from a bowl. The kids’ job was to locate the flat stones and pass them to daddy or mom, and then of course, they wanted to do their own throws as well, make the stones ricochet off the mirror the way Dan or I could. Admittedly, Dan was a better stone skipper than I was. His throws would go farthest and skip many times, while mine fell short, jumped with less enthusiasm. He had better technique.

With inexperience, and lacking any technique beyond “chuck it”, the kids’ rocks unceremoniously arced into the air and then made a plunk and a plop as they careened through the surface to find their new home on the lake shore bottom.

I picked up stone after stone, attempting to best my husband’s records, but his distance and amount of skips doubled or tripled mine every time.

“How do you do that?” I asked him.

“Practice.”

He confessed that, as a child, he used to skip stones with his dad.  “When at the beach, you skip rocks,” he told me, and he lived close to shore. Stone after stone of his, gliding across the water like a flying saucer, like a gull touching down for little sips, before gliding back up. Dan skipped stones like a form of meditation; he skipped stones as though the act were greater than the sum of its parts, an impulse that cannot be taught and comes from within. He skipped stones for the joy of the game.

I, on other hand, had thrown rocks here and there, but I had never been intentional about improving my stone skipping skills. But intentionality is the key; not only the act of throwing the stone. Intention and repetition—the intention to improve. I could likely improve on my own after many hours of practice, but I could also have asked Dan to critique my stance, my grip, my force. I could have turned to him as someone who has figured something out about the art of stone skipping—but I didn’t. My nature is too competitive. If I had listened to him, I might have made adjustments that could have led to better stone skipping not according to his standard, but against previous versions of myself.

Some instructions are more easily explained between parent and child than between husband and wife.

Dan passed Ariel a stone. He taught her how to balance the cold weight in her hand just right, held flat like a pancake between thumb and forefinger. He adjusted her grip, and she let the pebble fly. Plop, plunk. She picked up another stone and chucked it. Plop, plunk. Time after time. The sound of failure—No. The sound of working one’s way to success.

We cheered every time, anyway. She didn’t need to be told she was doing it wrong; she needed to understand that she was on her way and see her dad’s example of what was possible. She needed to form the memory of a fire burning so that later she could reignite.

Everything I’ve written here, on the magical shores of Lake Huron, can be applied to teaching creative writing and encouraging writing students (stay with me here). Students need loads of writing practice and a multitude and variety of writing examples. Students need to read good books. Every student will benefit from knowing what they’re doing right; and where they can further improve. The teacher’s job is to provide models and offer suggestions for improvement; the student’s job is to listen and learn. And practice. Practice without the fear of the plop and plunk.

Let plop, plunk become the mantra for learning how to fail.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence that, besides reading, skipping stones was the experience I most recalled from that week. The activity we engaged in together created memorable moments of joy. In this way, writing can also be a collaborative effort, when we think of writing as a chorus of human voices humming the sounds of our collective experience. The teacher’s job is to help students hear that sound, to teach them how to listen and then find their voice, and encourage them to keep singing. Keep singing.

Teach your students to write as the water on that calm day, come sunset: reverent and obedient to the disappearing sun, as if this might be the last day—this could be it.

Summer Hours

What is a summer for?

This question is reminiscent of a series of questions Mary Oliver asks in her famous poem “The Summer Day”: “Tell me, what else should I have done?/ Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?/ Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”

What’s a summer for? Poetry, books, literature. Reading.

Summer is for the senses: smells, sounds, taste, sights. Touch. Yesterday, I watched a baby bunny skirt its way around the edge of our pool, sample the greenery. A pileated woodpecker, with its red-headed cap, sat nearby the bunny with its two teenage fledglings. The three of them pecked and dined on the ants crossing our cement pathway. Two cardinals, a male and female, flashy crimson and a dull brownish-grey, fluttered in the nearby branches. A summer is for rebirth and reimaginings of the self. Those who know how to summer will know how to winter.

I spent two weeks at my cottage with family and in the final moments of our stay, with the heavy rains at bay, the tang of damp earth and rainwater charged my nostrils as I made my way toward the end of the dock for one last jump, wrapped in my towel, flecks of cedar tree bits plastered to bare feet, the elongated hillsides in the distance. As I approached, the dock heaved with the lake’s gentle ripples while the grey skies held themselves back, like overstuffed bellies. I dove in and the black wetness coated my skin and held me like a baby seal. Misty pines sat perched on the horizon in my field of vision, as I bobbed there, and a trail of fog traced its way across the surface of the water like the finger that drags across the lover’s nude body. I stayed that way a moment, in my selkie state, admiring the view, and hanging in the limbo of vacation mode. The return home, to my real life, would mean otherwise. A summer is for recovering the senses, immersing oneself in the natural world and stripping down to only what is necessary.

And what of summer’s taste? Waxy green beans with their downy skins, steamed only a minute or two to limpen their bodies and then douse in butter, salty with a hint of sweet. Ontario corn, peaches and cream, grape vine tomatoes, baby tomatoes, snap peas, snow peas, cucumbers, zucchinis, purple potatoes, red potatoes, fingerling potatoes, white potatoes, strawberries, blackberries, blueberries, raspberries, cherries, plums, carrots, beets, watermelon, apples, lettuces plucked from the garden like sheaths of nature’s mane. The Niagara peaches, succulent nectar, their juice drips down my chin, eyes closed in pleasure. If the sun abandoned its way of being a burning gas in the sky and moved to Earth in search of its solid yet liquid sugary form, I believe it would choose to embody the peach, recognizing itself instantly in the heavenly taste of its origins. A summer is for devouring.

I’m sitting outside right now and the leaves on the maple trees are floating—I don’t know how else to describe them. Tree petals that rise and fall like breath, such is the gentleness of the wind, nothing more than a deep sigh, a honeyed caress. The birch leaves flutter like confetti high above, and the sun, which touches everything with its spotlight, pierces their tender skin, illuminating their insides as though studying the inner workings of life itself. The sky is clear and blue blue blue, the blue of pale irises and our faded patio umbrella. Summer is for skies and creation.

The onset of August marks a turning point in the summer season. I feel the shift in the air first thing on my dog walk in the morning. The air has a crispness that wasn’t there before. The tree frogs sing into the heat of the afternoon, with long sustained foretelling notes. Fall is coming…fall is almost here. And I will mourn summer’s departure, in the quiet moments, while steeping myself in her dwindling light every day that I can. Summer is for carrying with you, a heat that settles in the tan of your skin; a heat that’s meant to last through the rest of the year.

The Thing With Teeth

What is it that’s biting into you?

Covid, Covid is the thing that’s sunk its jaws into my flank, that’s shaking me like a rag doll and refusing to let go.

The thing I want to bite into: new short stories to be written.

On the edge of the Sahara Desert, where the sand dunes delivered the sun two mornings in a row before my very eyes, I could feel the stories waiting to be written beneath my skin, sliding into my periphery like the sand dunes snaking their way across the desert. The people I met: the American geriatric doctor, the exuberant Moroccan who showed me how to kill a theoretical scorpion with the twist of his sandaled heel (“See, like this. POP.”) and the young Palo-alto tech couple—all of them, become in my mind’s eye potential characters.

The desert as a landscape, where the wind whispers her sands of time, and 400-million-year-old spiraled fossils, ammonites, erode into dust. I could have spent months looking out at those waves…water, waves! Waves is what I’m calling the pattern in the sands, because an ocean is what the desert used to be, an ocean is what I hear and feel when I close my eyes. The water remains, you can sense it, holding up the dunes, aquifers keeping the mountains of sand in place deep below the ground. The way the sand insulates sound is remarkable; a roaring wind and a deathly quiet. The exact same as a blanket of snow, without the cold. The perfect setting for a mystery or a murder. I drew a heart in the sand that contained our names and by the next morning, my artwork was erased. One could theoretically conceal all kinds of weapons and deeds in the desert.

The sand comes alive with the rise of the moon; the only trace of activity during the daytime are the early morning tracks that haven’t yet been blown away. Small round circles for the fennec fox. A sort of punctuated sweeping drag from sand beetles and innumerable other unidentifiable (to me) designs and patterns.

Alongside the quiet—and here we dabble in plot and conflict—there was a howl, long high-pitched and sustained. On repeat. This fervent call, on the morn of our departure. It didn’t take me long to identify the site of the sound and its inhabitant. A lone desert wolf, howling, howling with the rise of the sun on the far off duney rocky edge. He howled as if greeting the fiery sky, and forlorn, and warning us about loneliness and the desert dangers simultaneously.

His howl had nothing to do with us—that’s just me inserting myself into the story. The howl was about the wolf being a wolf in the desert; howling at the sunrise being one of the things wolves do, I suppose. Nevertheless, I wish I could have answered him. I wish more still that I could have caught the sound on my Iphone, but listening back to the footage later, the only howl caught on camera is the whine of the wicked wind that pulled at our clothing and hair and tried to pry the phone from my fingers with its sand-laden ferocity. And so, without recorded sound, the wolf becomes a ghost of itself, a distant howl in the desert of my mind, the sun invading my senses, invading every square inch of sky, colouring the sand red, causing me to squint in defeat. But in real life, I heard the call many times, the wind, while tearing, carried the sound of the wolf’s haunting howl to my ears. The sound—right now—that I’m recording, that has carried me back to the page and my stories.

I won’t forget.

The House of Dreams

The House of Dreams

The house of dreams is a place we seek that also seeks us.

Once you step inside, you won’t want to leave—but know there is no returning.

Fear is the main reason most people won’t arrive there. They don’t believe that they can.

You will know when it’s time to enter; you’ll feel a pressure in your bones, a flexing in your fascia, the tipping sensation in your guts. Because that’s what it takes to step inside the house of dreams: a fortitude of will.

In the house where you used to live, the mirror on the wall held an image; you’ll stop looking at her and cease all chatter pertaining to what you are, are not, and could never be. Because in the house of dreams, you become who you are. All that you already were and always will be. You are no longer the person looking in that mirror and peering into an absence or a deficit. The ‘you’ in the house of dreams is fully present and resplendent and shining in her glory of oneness and selfhood. The ‘you’ in the house of dreams is not a reflection of anyone else—any other man’s greatness—the triumph is completely her own.

In the house of dreams, there is a threshold, and once the line is crossed, where you are standing now—among your fiercest dreams—the sensory experience is a hurricane of magnificence, a glittering room of spring blossoms. An invisible door shuts behind you into a white mist. The room you came from ceases to exist. Your trepidation is no longer fear-based, it’s…anticipation.

 For most people—for you—reaching the house of dreams takes time. Decades. Even, millennia. Lifetimes. You continue to knock at the door until you land your knuckles right, and now you have. You will. The house of dreams is the destination sought by the brave.

What is the house of dreams? Where are you now? It’s as much a feeling as it is a place, or a fourth state of matter…When you try to grasp an image in your mind’s eye, you picture the lip of the doorframe, decorated white and silver, the smoky mist ahead and at your back, and the anticipation of having…arrived. You are here. Where you are meant to be. The place you were headed but didn’t truly know it. Until now.

Now that you are here in the house of dreams, welcome. (One would never feel unwelcome, in the house of dreams.)

The house of dreams is where dreams are born and get lived out. To be invited in means you have worked hard. You have likely suffered, lost, grieved, sacrificed. Those knuckles may be bloodied. Your place in the house of dreams is earned.

 The house of dreams belongs to you and you alone. It’s your house of dreams. And it was your work that got you here. No mirrors hang in the house of dreams. No pictures, either. Only your smiling face right now. Here. Present.

 Only you—living out your dreams.

Your friends—your true friends—will be there, right beside you, patting your shoulder and prodding you forward on your way to the entrance. They make it safer to go inside. They give you their wisdom like fairy godmothers bestowing gifts, but you take only what you need and leave the rest. Every decision in the house of dreams is yours.

Now, you have arrived. But I don’t have to tell you that because you already know. You feel the pulse under your skin like the fever of desire. The sweet brow beads of sweat gathered, now dry, bone dry. Whisked away with every doubt. Every denial of self.

The house of dreams is where she steps into her full power.

Take off your shoes. Stay a while. Curl up on the lilac sparkly rug that has suddenly appeared. Let your breathing slow, steady.

If you find yourself, standing on the threshold, deciding whether or not to go in, take a deep breath and please, believe in yourself. Once you decide to take that step—once you step through that door—there’s no turning back. You will be standing in the room in the house of your dreams filled with wonder. And that wonder—is you.

The Word I Don’t Use Anymore

Published as an Op-ed in the Toronto Star, Saturday, February 24th, 2024:

“One Commonly Used Word We Need to Release into the Abyss of History” https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/one-commonly-used-word-we-need-to-release-into-the-abyss-of-history/article_995dc748-d042-11ee-8cb5-df145c3cbe26.html

Twenty years ago, the ‘R’ word (“retard”) was used prolifically on school playgrounds, on the radio in people’s homes, and even during work meetings. With dedicated public awareness campaigns, disability advocates have been able to change the narrative, public attitude and perceptions of the ‘R’ word over the last decade, to the point that I rarely hear it spoken anymore. The connection between people with intellectual disabilities and the ‘R’ word was made explicit—you couldn’t say the word without punching down at the person. Societally, I like to think that we do have a conscience, and when the connection was made, most people didn’t want to be punching down at people with intellectual disabilities.

Fast forward to 2024. In almost every book I read, I come across the word ‘idiot’. I once used that word in the same context I still hear it frequently: I’ve done something stupid, therefore, I am an idiot. Insult based on a low IQ. The original meaning hasn’t changed. But where does that word come from and why don’t I use it anymore?

We have to go back to the early 1900s at the turn of the twentieth century. With the opening of large-scale institutions, doctors and medical professionals routinely recommended that babies with Down syndrome were removed from their families and placed into institutional guardianship. The institutionalization of people with Down syndrome went on for over a hundred years—shockingly, into the 2000s.

My family and I are still experiencing the reverberating negative effects of this separation and institutionalization of people with Down syndrome from their families, and one such way is the damning language of institutionalization that persists. In case you don’t know what went on in those institutions, suffice it to say degradation, torture, violence, and full-scale dehumanization that included drugging, hosing down, and forced sterilization of residents.

I first read extensively about this history of violence in Dr. Catherine McKercher’s book Shut Away: When Down Syndrome was a Life Sentence, which chronicles the history of institutionalization in Canada.

At the time, medical professionals had a language, a particular vernacular, to refer to people with intellectual or cognitive disabilities. This is the language of the institution: “People with IQs between 90 and 70 were considered dull or borderline, and anyone whose IQ was below that was classified feeble-minded. There were three types of feeble-minded people: morons (IQs of 50-69), imbeciles (IQs of 20-49), and idiots (IQs below 20).” (Shut Away)

If I tell you, when I was a classroom teacher 15 years ago, that these terms were still hanging around as a classification system to describe IQ for students with disabilities, these exact same terms, would you believe me?

If I told you, that my own daughter with Down syndrome’s intelligence was assessed under the guise of using the results to get her the school support she needs, and we were presented a graph with a flat line,

“Okay,” I said, “where are her results?” And the results were the flat line. A line yawning just above zero, as in, my daughter, who makes me smile and cry and laugh hysterically has zero intelligence.

Would you believe that would make her an ‘idiot’, to use the outdated terminology that has only recently—very recently—been updated.

When a term becomes an insult it becomes a weapon of dehumanization. When someone is viewed as less than human, they get treated badly. We use “idiot” as an insult, and when we do, we unwittingly call forth the language of the past. The language of institutionalization. A language that dehumanized people with Down syndrome in the past and continues to dehumanize them in the present. A language that would harm my daughter. A language that harms me, as her mother.

Once I made the connection, I couldn’t unsee it.

We can’t undo the past, but we can be mindful of the words we choose moving forward.

Some words we reclaim. Others we need to release into the abyss as relics of a sad and awful history.

 

52 Writing Prompts

In 2023, I decided to offer up one little nugget of inspiration for writers per week (at LEAST) in the form of a writing prompt. Here they are. Numbers 1 to 52 for each week of the year. I hope you find some inspiration and write on!

1. Write about a New Year’s Eve party, or a resolution gone wrong
2. Look out the closest window and write what you see
3. Open the book closest to you and use the first sentence that catches your eye as your prompt
4. Google ‘Random Word Generator’, select the ‘five words’ option, then include those five words in your piece of writing
5. What is peeking out of a hole looking at you? Write that story
6. Focusing on the senses, describe what you see/hear/smell, etc. right now
7. Tell your greatest love story or the story of the lover who broke your heart
8. What is ‘family?’
9. What do the snowflakes say to one another as they’re falling from the sky?
10. When the women start a revolution, it will be because…
11. You’ve found a pot of “gold.” What is that gold and what does it mean to you
12. The birds sing because…
13. Only fools rush in
14. Surprisingly, the chocolate egg hatched…
15. Write something you’ve never told anyone
16. Imagine your home on Mars
17. Write a list poem, beginning each sentence with, “I will try…”
18. Write your earliest memory
19. Who or what are you the mother of?
20. Create a scene by writing about a moment in time as though you are watching a movie
21. Write about the object closest to you. Tell its story
22. Write from the perspective of one of your emotions
23. The situation is that you are hanging from a cliff. But what’s the story here?
24. Write using your father’s voice or an imagined father’s voice
25. Tell the story of the one who lifts you up
26. Write the story of the sky, the river, the stones
27. Find a poem or short text in a language you don’t know and “translate” it as best you can through guess work to create something new
28. Use a colour as the central point of meaning in your story
29. Create a piece of playful writing with the sole purpose of delighting a child (after Dr. Seuss or Eric Carle)
30. Go outside on a sensory field trip. Take notes, then find a place to sit and write about your observations
31. Freewrite. Don’t stop and think, simply let the words fall down and out onto the page
32. Play the last song you listened to, and either use it as inspiration or pull a lyric to use and start writing
33. Google ‘Random Picture Generator’ and write a piece to accompany the first image that pops up
34. If you were a phase of the moon, what phase would you be?
35. All good things must end
36. Write a back-to-school memory
37. Write a letter to a specific person, who has upset you or brought you joy, to unburden those emotions
38. Write about a moment of change in your life
39. In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott writes: “You own everything that happened to you. Tell your stories. If people wanted you to write warmly about them, they should have behaved better.” Who has behaved badly?
40. You peer down into the lake, and see…
41. What are you grateful for?
42. “A life doesn’t happen in grand narratives,” says Peter Babiak. Write into the small
43. Tell a story using only dialogue
44. Write a spooky story
45. What brings you peace?
46. What keeps the flame burning?
47. Write two opposing ideas coming together, a juxtaposition
48. Write about your character’s desire
49. The five things your therapist told you
50. Never write a story with talking animals. Most publisher explicitly write on their websites: NO books with anthropomorphised animals—except maybe this once? 😉
51. On the coldest night of the year…
52. Write about receiving a gift that surprised you

SMILE

The girls’ school photos came home in their backpacks. My oldest has a closed-mouth smile, she’s wearing her navy school uniform sweatshirt and has her hair pulled back so that it appears she only has poofy bangs, nothing else. She says she likes her picture, that this year’s school photo is her favourite one, which for a preteen—or for anyone, really—is a win. Her lion eyes shine. The youngest’s portrait is a sly cheeky smile, round baby cheeks, with her chin slightly tucked. She’s feigning shy. Her pearly white teeth flash, and a turquoise flower she chose from the drawer is pinned to her mane, couched in a bed of curls that pulls her whole look together. She is a picture of innocence. And then our middle child, Elyse. Her smile is glittery, glasses mostly straight on her face, and she’s leaning back slightly, her shoulders pulled up by her ears as though bracing herself. Her beautiful smile is punctuated with holes where teeth still need to grow and oversized teeth in the places they already have. Her smile is perfect. She’s plucky and super cute, and behind that grin there’s a spark. Each of their photos brings a genuine smile to my face. They each smiled for the camera in their own way, in a way true to their individual personalities.

It’s a quiet and sunny Sunday morning, a chill in the air, and I’m walking my dog with Dan down the street in a huff, ranting freely about something I care deeply about, but that doesn’t pertain to the folks in my neighbourhood—so I’m really letting loose. I am angry, genuinely angry, and expressing my genuine anger to my husband, my confidante. The idea of expressing the anger on the walk is to process and eradicate it in a productive manner, i.e. non-violence. Well. At the peak of what was supposed to be my private diatribe, an older woman across the street happened to appear from her car, catching me off guard, and immediately picked up on my saltiness.

            “Smile!” she calls out, with an easy laugh, hands on her hips. Smile.

            Smile. I repeat the word under my breath with venom. Did she just tell me to smile?

Words cannot adequately express the rage I felt billowing out of me like a thick cloud when she goaded me on with that word, and told me how I am supposed to act. Smile. Women, especially women, are told to smile. Conceal your discontent, your ill-will, your heartache, grief, rage, sense of injustice, fear and just…smile. Well.

I threw the dog leash to Dan and stormed down the street, afraid that if I paused to look back I might say something to the woman about minding her own goddamn business that I would instantly regret. After all, she was only trying to be nice, right? WRONG. She was enforcing the rules. What rules? The rules of engagement. Society’s rules that hold women to a certain impossible standard. The rules of female decorum. She wasn’t telling me to smile for me. She was telling me to smile for him. She wasn’t listening to my true feelings like Dan was perfectly capable of doing on his own, she was telling me how to feel, to BE NICE like her. To be fake. Smile. Keep those messy feelings inside of you, tidy them away with the stupid grin on your face. Be a good girl. She was looking at me through the eyes of the patriarchal gaze, the one that seeks to control women and how they behave both publicly and privately. She was likely brought up under the male gaze and is only enforcing and preaching what she knows, what’s been stamped into her without her even noticing the pressure.

Would it ever occur to her that maybe I don’t want to smile if I feel shitty inside? That smiling would only make the feeling ten times worse. That smiling a fake smile is for the people on the outside, not the person within. That men are never told to smile, especially not when they are raging. Did it occur to her that my actions and behaviours are purely my own to dictate? That I’m pretty sure, when it comes to smiling, I was an early bloomer, and that I don’t require reminders on when a smile should occur. That being told to smile rises violent thoughts inside of me. That being told to smile makes me want to rage.

My girls know it’s okay not to smile if they don’t want to, if they don’t feel like it, if they’re having a hard day or whatever the reason may be. No reason or explanation needed. I tell my girls they don’t have to pretend to like someone either, but I do ask them to be respectful. I try to avoid asking them to “be nice” except, please, with each other, and I focus instead on “be kind,” which I would teach any child of mine. And while I may have asked them to smile for the camera in the past, I don’t anymore, or at least I’m working on it. Not because I don’t want them to be happy­—I do, I very much do want them to be happy. On their own terms. Real smile, real happiness.

By the time I rounded the bend, and Dan caught up to me, the number of swear words in my head was already diminishing. I could see the whole situation for what it was: ridiculous. I will not be told how to feel. Especially not by some stranger on the street. As the walk continued, the physicality of movement and fresh air calmed me, as I hoped it would. By mid-way home, having adequately expressed my vehement disgust and other feelings of anger at being told how to be in the world, I let out a laugh, in spite of myself. A feeling of joy erupted; it was the sound of being listened to. I felt heard, which allowed me to genuinely smile and enjoy the rest of my walk with my husband.

I didn’t even need to fake it.

Summer’s Embers: On Getting A Book Deal

Summer’s embers. What does that mean? It means summer is burning down, petering out, ending (it’s done)—but what do we know about embers?  Embers smolder, they keep burning even when the fire is mostly out. Embers glow in the night, in darkness, hot coals in relief. Embers hold on to their fire.

This summer, I had my ember moment.

For ten years, I have been writing a book in one form or another. Ten years of lighting the pages and then burning myself down. Ten years that resulted in the completion of an unpublished memoir and a second memoir, I DON’T DO DISABILITY AND OTHER LIES I’VE TOLD MYSELF, a complete new book, in the form of a collection of essays. Art feeds on art, and so fanned the flames.

In the dying days of my summer vacation in Greece I knew this: my manuscript of essays was complete. I read the book twice over before I left, having written and polished the individual essays over years. I spent two weeks prior to the trip feverishly sending out queries to desirable publishers. Their responses could take months, years even. I wasn’t sure if I could wait. But of course I could wait; I’ve been waiting for ten years.

The email came in Greece as I was sitting in a chaise lounge on the beach reading a book, the day late, the sun winding down, the waves calm and rhythmically lapping the shore. I reached for my phone, opened my emails, and saw the new message at the top, the one from the publisher. I read the first two sentences and burst into tears. I could barely contain my emotion to read through the rest of that email. What did it say? It wasn’t a book deal, no, not yet—but the editor’s words held the real promise of one. And I knew, full stop inside of my being, that I DON’T DO DISABILITY AND OTHER LIES I’VE TOLD MYSELF was going to be published. I felt this truth burn inside me.

Several months prior, I was talking to a literary journal editor about my book. I was so certain about the need for my work on disability parenting and motherhood and being a woman, and my determination to make myself and my daughter seen, that when I paused, the editor looked me in the eye and said, “It’s already done.” I didn’t have a book deal or a connection or anything tangible to know for certain that publication would happen, but I believed in the work. I believed fiercely in my work.

What that email on the beach said was I SEE YOU. Not in those words, but in how the publishing editor described my book, in how she wanted to take my project on, in how she wrote, “Can we talk?” And isn’t that what everybody wants? To be seen and heard for their ideas and who they are? To be understood?

And so in this quiet and intimate way, I am sharing with you the story of how I came to get my first book deal. I DON’T DO DISABILITY AND OTHER LIES I’VE TOLD MYSELF has found a home with Dundurn Press, a Toronto based publisher I deeply admire. Release date to come, stay tuned.

I am no longer that ember, close to burning out.

I am pure celebration; fireworks, shooting across the sky.

Poseidon’s Handmaiden

I want to tell you something about Greece. I’m here for two weeks, and this place has made an impression, taken hold. I will start with right now, this moment I’m in.

I’m sitting outside in a bamboo chair on a white linen cushion, my feet rest on the cool stone slab flooring of my white adobe style home. Bamboo shoots create a thatched roof overhead, dappled sunlight filters through. It’s 1:00 p.m., seven hours ahead of home time, which means it’s hot, too hot to be out walking around on the scorching sand that forms the dusty road that leads to the beach, only five minutes away on foot. I’m listening to “Summer” (The Carters), the happy cries of nearby children float in on the persistent breeze that blows through the open patio. My view is of Agios Prokopios, Naxos’ most famous beach, arguably one of the best beaches in the world. My hair is damp and dry salty strands fall in my field of vision as I type. A yacht and a handful of sailboats hover on the horizon. Mostly what I see is blue blue sea. Fifty shades. A scattering of umbrellas along a golden stretch of sand that reaches 1.5 km. Directly in front of me, bunches of green grapes with a blush of red attached to a sprawling vine rest on the seriated roof of my neighbour below. Two bright blue towels, hung with care on the chair behind me, flutter like beating hearts. Our door, painted a pale blue the exact colour of the sky, hangs open. If I were to invite you in, we could admire the marble countertops in the kitchen and bathroom commonly found in Greece, and feast on the rich colour of the bougainvillea bush outside my bedroom window or gaze longingly at the sea. I could explain how long it took me to understand that nothing but human waste goes in the toilet—no, not even toilet paper.

Come back outside with me for a moment, back to the Aegean Sea and the pale blue sky. Not 20 minutes ago, I had the best swim of my life. Ariel and I walked the length of the beach, about 25 minutes, to eat at a creperie in town, and then Ariel, who didn’t feel like swimming, took on the role of porter for our things while I turned in the direction of the sea.

Coarse sand balances my weight; the first step at shore’s edge, toes submerged, sends a chill up my spine, which is a relief because I’m sweating from the blazing sun. I pause momentarily, then a few more steps and I’m in up to my chest. I can see down to my toes. As I propel myself forward, an open expanse of crystal-clear water unfolds. If you are a person who loves swimming, as I am, then I don’t have to tell you there is no greater joy than the ‘good part’ of a body of water, the place best for swimming without obstacle. Here, the good part doesn’t end. No debris—seaweed or rocks or visible wildlife or otherwise. The water cool, but not cold—refreshing. No waves, save for the occasional gradual swell, a joyful rising, not unlike the feeling inside my body as I make my way down the coastline, waving to my daughter on shore who cools her legs in the gentle breaking surf. I swim and swim and swim, passing the occasional Greek or Italian, and swim some more for over a kilometer. A more gorgeous swim, I cannot imagine. The person who designed infinity pools has visited a Greek beach, perhaps this one, I am sure of it.

My eyes have grown accustomed to the salty water, and I submerge completely and stroke my arms one, two, there, four, five, six. Resurface for breath. Ariel beckons me back to shore. I depart, having completed my journey along the wide horseshoe. The sea’s fingerprints trace down the length of my body, leaving its salty residual, my hair crispy and clumped and wild. I walk to the outdoor shower to rinse off, slip on my flip flops, then clop the five minutes home.

I am Poseidon’s handmaiden now, lured into the sea’s cradle like men drawn by the sirens’ whispers. Poseidon, mighty Olympian who presides over the sea, I aim to serve. Even apart, the wind, its saline brine, carries reminders of the sea.

Likely I will make it back to Canada—likely. But if I do not, blame the gods.