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 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

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.

Magic Tokens

I‘m writing this in Toronto, sitting at a picnic table bench, on a patio behind a modern café. Two magic tokens are tucked somewhere in my bag. Last night, I stood on a stage in front of a room full of people and read from my essay “Navel-Gazing, a Revolution & a Love Story: The Importance of the Self and Stories of the Marginalized” recently published in the Humber Literary Review where I argue for the importance of personal narratives. I point out that the dismissal of those narratives by the literary community, with insults such as “navel-gazer!”, is just another way of silencing marginalized groups. In the piece, I weave in the narrative of witnessing a female friend fall in love with another woman, and I mistakenly insert myself into their narrative. This is perhaps my way of saying just because you don’t identify or see yourself in a story doesn’t mean the story isn’t of value. Quite the opposite. The morning of the reading, I was paddling the 5 km perimeter of my cottage lake, my writing friend a distant paddle board dot. We spent two glorious days together writing, and during that time my friend received some difficult news.

The cottage lake was still. The air held its breath. And paddling in my kayak, I could see the rows upon rows of trees layering the hills, and I could see a specific cluster of towering white pines reflected in the water in front of me. That reflection, I thought, it’s real. The reflection in my computer screen less so. Real in the sense of nature; nature that is true and good and right and calming. No artifice. No tricks. Yet, infinitely more magical. I could see the benefit our surroundings were having on my friend. I could see that being together, when receiving difficult news, is better than being apart.

I believe in the magic of the natural world, but I also believe in other forms of magic, too. I believe in magical thinking. I believe in the magic of each other.

A long-time friend of mine showed up to my reading, along with her three kids—her youngest being three. When I posted the event and invited the world to attend, it somehow didn’t occur to me that I’d be reading in a bar. Bars generally being unwelcoming places for small children of which my friend has three. When she asked me if she could bring them beforehand I didn’t hesitate, “Looking forward to seeing you!” I texted back, oblivious. The alternative being that she didn’t come. My own kids wouldn’t be there. The bartender is thankfully gracious and inviting, the literary crowd friendly, the kids well-behaved, my friend a trooper.

Right before my reading, her youngest, hair combed and pulled into several adorable buns, gives me a thumbs up and an eye wink. “Is this the show?” she asks me. “Yes,” I tell her with a smile as the land acknowledgement is read. “She’s going to be so disappointed,” I whisper laugh with my friend.

But as it turns out, my friend will text me the next day that they had a great time and “even the kiddos enjoyed themselves.” As it turns out, you can will an experience to bring you joy, even when it risks not being so, just by being together. As it turns out, there can be magic in a room, on the stage, and I’m talking about the magic of other people and their willingness to love you.

I read alongside a Giller Prize-nominated writer and spent a long time later talking to another writer whose short story collection was nominated for the Danuda Gleed Award. Both prestigious literary prizes in Canada. Maybe their sparkle will rub off on me? Does literary magic work that way? I hope so. Later, on my Uber ride home back to my friend’s where I will stay the night, I tell the driver all about the evening. I will then recall that I talk quite a bit, and that my writing friend and I had laughed about this at the cottage on our drive home. The driver will encourage me, “It’s okay, writers should talk a lot.” And that, in itself, will be a sort of magic. “Yes,” I agree, “writers need to have an opinion, something to say.” I recognize the difference between talking too much and having something to say.

And perhaps the thing I have to say is that when I’m done writing this post, I will be heading to the hospital with my daughter—again. This time, planned. This time, welcome. As much as a hospital trip can ever be. Dental surgery overdue. Dental surgery that we hope will bring her and us much needed relief. And there is a magic in the doctors who are magicians of life and there is a magic in relieving my daughter’s pain, which is real, as real as my own that transpires on her behalf. Because she is a part of me.

Before the reading, at my writer friend’s gorgeously renovated high park home, she will descend the staircase in a flurry and hold two tokens up in front of me. “These are for you,” she says. I am awestruck by the gift of these good luck talismans whose dulled shine have passed many hands. How thoughtful. I look to her, grateful. “For my reading?” I say in earnest, “for good luck?”

“No,” she says, “for the subway!”

My magic tokens, I will call them, clutching them both in my hand. Talismans of good luck. And when we arrive at the subway gates, on the way to my reading, the tokens are no longer accepted and the security guard magically opens the gates and lets me pass for free with a wave of his hand.

The night is a success; the reading goes off without a hitch. The children are mesmerized. The crowd a delight.

Simply by believing they would, the magic tokens hold their promise

Curiosity Over Fear

What is it that your heart desires? I think about this question often. I check in with myself to see what are my goals and am I on track to reach those goals with how I’m living my life?

I am convinced that saying what we want for ourselves out loud is one of the hardest things to do because then we have to decide whether to follow up on those desires. We have to act to lead ourselves toward the life we want. To follow up on our own dreams can mean to risk disappointing the people we care about. But if we don’t follow up, we risk disappointing ourselves. To act can also mean to risk failure. We might not make it. Nobody likes to experience failure. The alternative is to do nothing, say nothing, and live the life that comes not necessarily easily, but the life that already stretches out before us. The life we have curated for ourselves, either deliberately or by default. It’s easier to continue moving forward on the set path than it is to admit the life we really want, and risk failure. But in the same breath, if we continue on the set path then aren’t we also risking growth? Self-fulfillment? A meaningful life?

After a late night spent watching an episode of The Last of Us, Dan and I jog Atlas on the nearby cinder trail. On these runs and dog walks, we talk about our family life and our children, but more often we find ourselves discussing our professional lives, conflicts, aspirations, and fears. On this particular morning, I was talking about job prospects with him. I’m a teacher and a writer, but how to hold space for both of these work identities? Which opportunity is the right one to pursue? Which way is the right way to be, I am perhaps really asking. “I know what I want,” I suddenly say to Dan. And I pronounce the words out loud. He nods his head; he already knows.

That afternoon, I’m running late taking my kid to a friend’s kid’s birthday party. We burst through the gymnasium doors hand-in-hand, her and I, my hair soaking wet and dripping onto my florescent pink sweatshirt. I squeezed in a quick shower after the run and was predictably running a few minutes behind. My daughter runs off to play with the other six-year-olds. I squeeze my friend tight, mother to the birthday girl, and she introduces me to another parent, a mom of four kids whose daughter attends ballet class with mine. The mom and I fall into easy conversation, and she tells me she’s an employment counsellor. She helps people find jobs. “I’m talking to someone about a job this week,” I tell her, and we talk about building careers after motherhood and stay at home parenting, and the sacrifices and the getting to what it is you really want. “I basically had to shut out my family life for two years to do my Masters,” I admit. Building a career does not come without sacrifice, and I’m striving for balance. I tell her how I know, from talking to hiring managers and listening to TED talks, that men often apply for jobs for which they are underqualified, and women often won’t apply at all unless they have every qualification listed. “But why not just go for it?” I offer.

“My uncle once told me,” she says, “that you should apply for jobs where you only have 50% of the qualifications listed. That way, you leave yourself room for growth.” Wow, yes. Room for growth. I find this to be true of myself. I’m rarely interested in jobs I already know how to do easily; I seek a challenge. Leave room for growth.

That day, I come across a reel posted by novelist Gwen Tuinman who says, “Creative living is any life that you live where your decisions are based more strongly on your curiosity than your fear.” As she arranges stripped-down, windswept sticks and feathers in an interesting pattern to be photographed, Gwen suggests that when we make decisions “based on curiosity rather than fear, you will be engaging with creativity; your life itself will become a work of art.” I do want to live my life guided by my curiosity, that which I do not yet know how to do, rather than by my fear. The fear of getting it wrong, of losing what I have, of not being enough. The fear of failure. And it’s a decision and commitment I have to make over and over; curiosity over fear.

What is it that my heart desires? A creative life.

What Did She Say?

two kids wrapped in blue towels wearing sunglasses sitting in lounger chairs

WHAT did she say?
I will preface these stories only by saying that Penelope is a six-year-old with doe eyes and a mop of curls.

The other day, I notice Penelope’s on her way to the basement.
“What are you doing?” I ask her, friendly-like.
“You don’t need to know that.” She answers in a way that stuns me into silence—then laughter.

Atlas is our male dog. Out of the blue, Penelope asks me, “When is Atlas going to have babies?”

We’re in a period of deep learning.

While I was attending Kelly Thompson’s book launch in Toronto for her newest memoir, STILL I CANNOT SAVE YOU, Dan was home with our three girls, running the show, as one does. I want to take a second to acknowledge the dads who do the work of childrearing in the same way mothers are expected to do the work, which is to say, without expecting any praise or accolades. Of course, gratitude is always welcome and appreciated by either sex. All to say, Dan does the work because the work needs doing. And, as a mother manager, I’m learning (unlearning) that whatever that work looks like, however the job gets done, when I’m away, that’s not my concern. I do not need to micromanage my children’s father’s parenting, and I certainly would not appreciate him micromanaging mine. Who has time for that? We consult with one another, but whoever is in charge ultimately takes responsibility.
After Kelly’s event, I got in my car feeling satisfied from a fun, busy evening with friends and writers. I checked my phone.
This is the text Dan sent me. A candid exchange between him and Penelope:
Penelope: can I go for a walk by myself?
Dan: Sure. Have fun.
Penelope: I’ll walk to bus stop and back.
Dan: Sounds good. Don’t cross any streets.
She leaves and returns shortly.
Dan: That was quick!
Penelope: I turned the corner from our street and it was creepy. It scared the fuck out of me, so I came home.

Now, there’s a lot to unpack here, but I think the first most important piece of information to point out is that Penelope knows that the “F-word” is a “bad” word. But she does not know that the F-word is “Fuck”. Now she does.
Dan had a nice, civil, follow-up conversation with her about language and what’s appropriate for a grade one to say.
Penelope suggested she heard the word from kids at school—perhaps.
We’ll never know.

On Carrying Grief

Let me tell you a story. Once, there was a writer who gave birth to a daughter with Down syndrome. Wait. That’s not how the story goes. Let’s begin again.
Once, there was a woman who wanted to write a book. She gave birth to a daughter with Down syndrome and that experience was the catalyst that led her to write with a purpose. Furthermore, the writer now understood the book she wanted to write. For the writer, there is no point in writing without passion at the centre. Her love for her daughter filled that hole.
One day, the writer was journaling on her bed when an eerie blue light filtered through the blinds. The writer transformed into a mother cast in a shadow of sadness and she cried for seven days and seven nights. Her tears flowed and formed a river, which we will call “de-nile.” The mother wrote about the curse of the blue light, but she couldn’t free herself from the sadness. Not completely. The story and grief stayed inside her. For years, she carried the curse of the blue light, unable to free herself of its burden. The writer in her wrote, but the mother in her kept her from telling the full truth.
Nine years passed. The writer produced a book and was in the thick mire of writing another. And it was during the writing of that second book that the story of the blue light came back to her. She’d been carrying it deep inside of her all these years. She had no idea the story would save her.
The writer’s second book was a collection of essays. One of the essays she was editing was lengthy, unruly and in need of…something. She took the essay with her to a retreat in France searching for answers. There, she met and received guidance from a scribing sage: “I don’t usually do this,” the scribing sage cautioned about being prescriptive “but what you have here is two essays.” Now the writer could see what was obvious to an outsider. And so, the words were cleaved and a new essay in its infancy was born.
Later, at home, pondering the new essay and what it could become, the writer recalled the story of the blue light. With time and experience, she understood more fully where the sadness had come from and why. She had carried the weight of the blue light on her back and she was ready to fling it aside, like a pack that had once served her, but was now empty of reserves. But it’s true that the grief may never subside in its entirety, and the writer and the mother are okay with that. They will greet grief, upon its return, as though welcoming a long lost friend.
To research the ancient story, the writer dug through old journals, fished open old documents to accurately recreate the tale. Ultimately, she searched her own heart. And the pieces fit. The essay was complete. The writer smiled at the mother she once was, the person who needed to guard her truth. In the end, the blue light served her well. And only by releasing the truth of that experience could the blue light also serve others.
The process only took nine years.

On Finishing

No story is ever truly finished. We live out our lives in waves, and sometimes we stop telling our tale, suspended, at the height of crests, and other times, we find ourselves holding our breath underwater somewhere near the bottom, left in the trough until the next rising wave comes along. Life has these peaks and valleys. Books, on the other hand, are different. Books do have an ending. Books must come to an end due to the limits of physical space, attention spans, and because for readers, endings are incredibly satisfying.

            Seven years ago, I wrote a memoir about my journey as a mother receiving a prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome when my second child was born. Over years, I wrote a complete draft, followed by two subsequent drafts. I sought feedback from experts and comments from beta readers and wrote the fourth and final draft incorporating those responses. With the help of a trusted professional editor, I had a final copy edit done. By 2019, I had a completed manuscript. Or so I thought.

For writers, endings can be incredibly hard to write. Not so for every writer, but what is true for every writer is that the ending needs to land and deliver—this is your final impression!—in a similar way that the beginning must draw readers in.

            One of the most difficult endings that a writer must contend with is completing the first draft, which is, of course, not an ending at all, but a place for the next stage of beginnings. Following a draft, revision and editing happen, and this is the bulk of the work. In his craft book On Writing, Stephen King wrote that writing is rewriting.

            Before rewriting, a first draft must exist. Next, comes multiple rounds of finessing. And this is where I find myself in the writing process of my second book, head ducked beneath the waves.

            I am writing a collection of essays. Essay writing is unique in that huge swaths of text (complete essays) may be finished before another section of the book has even begun. I find myself with essays in varying stages of completion. I have essays from my book that are published and a few more I want to write from the ground up.

            As we come to the end of 2022, I’m reflecting on what it means to “finish” the current book I’m writing. I have an admission: finishing a book or project is the absolute hardest bit for me. I am spectacular at beginnings. I have new ideas a plenty. Several other books exist partially on the page and in my head that I want to write. A chapbook, two books of poetry, a collection of short stories and in the past few weeks, I’ve been developing an idea for a novel—a novel! Meanwhile, my collection of essays sits patiently to the side, at risk of becoming an abandoned child. I, the mother, guilty of neglect. The truth of the matter is that my essays are close, but the ending, wrapping up what I have, is a challenge. Finishing a project requires discipline and putting in the time. Finishing becomes more methodical, and while creative thinking is paramount infinitum, to finish requires curtailing any wild flares or fancies. I must work within the confines of what I have begun, of what has already been laid down and round out what is lacking. Finishing, tying up loose ends and editing and rewriting essays, is work. Arguably the most important work to be done. My mind loves to jump to the glittery rock at the bottom of the pond of my thoughts. That new shiny thing, yes, my brain says. Pick it up! Pick it up! Let’s write about that! I have to swat away those impulses, or better yet, write them down in my daily process journal for another day when the essays are done. Nothing is ever wasted. I resist the stone’s temptation and strengthen my resolve. I finished writing a book once, and I will do it again, I remind myself.

            This finishing business is no easy task. The Down syndrome memoir I began writing seven years ago I no longer consider a completed work. I no longer think of that book as “done”, but as something that I’ll come back to. And in many ways, I already have. In many ways, I have never not been working on that book. Stories from my memoir have found their way into my essays. While I once found an end to that book, the stories continue. Sometimes, you must write the first book in order to get to the second, truer story.

2023 is the year I finish writing my collection of essays. If I had a vision board, it would also say, “2023 is the year I find a publisher.” I have been working on the pursuit of my publication dream for ten years. These stories I’ve been keeping, they were never really mine to hold onto. They are for you. Capturing the stories, writing them down, sustains me, but putting those stories out into the world and having others receive them is, for me, one of the most satisfying endings.