I have been up to it in dirt : the kind that grows, the stuff that clogs.
But planting a garden can yield some good things, both to eat and to improve your writing.
Planting my summer garden is giving me breaks from the other kind of dirt, the dust bunnies and muddy clumps that jam my creativity and blur my writing like a window in need of a good scrub.
What clogs my writing:
Overthinking: spinning my mental wheels on a phrase or image that won’t budge
Lack of attention: allowing chores, laziness, other people’s needs or my own excuses take me away from my writing time
Ridiculous demands: I choose to immerse myself in a busy home and family life. Expecting I will finish my book in a few weeks without changing that pattern is like planting seeds on a Tuesday and expecting to eat from the garden on Wednesday afternoon
Avoidance of what I want to say,or where I need to go in my story, searching for words that I already have but don’t trust myself to spit out
How does gardening help my writing?
If for no other reason, it gets me off my butt, into the fresh air, and hands-deep into something tangible. Ideas and words are powerful but engage a different set of senses than physical actions. Soil warm and damp, tiny plants green and fragrant, the sun on my back and a breeze kissing my cheek – all these sensations bring spirit back to body and relax the mind, which is when the great writing can germinate and flow
Gardening, like writing, is also an exercise in delayed gratification. I need to get my hands dirty now if I want the sweet juiciness of fresh veggies come late summer. When I savour that first bite of a sun-ripened tomato, the mess and backache and sunburn will be forgotten. It’s the same with my manuscript: if I want to savour the journey of a well-tended story, I need to roll up my sleeves, kneel into the cauldron of cacophony and weed, till, plant, fertilize, water and tend my writing. I need to plunge into the muddy patches until they run clear, choose key words or memories and give space for them to grow, pull out by the roots any scenes or characters or chapters, even, that are strangling the story I want to tell. There is no other way but to get dirty and put in the work.
But oh, the rewards. Keep at it. Rose or radish, whatever you’re growing will make the world a bit better.
The calendar says Mother’s Day. This year for me, it’s Apple Pie day.
I’ve always known what apple pie was. It’s only recently that I’ve allowed that I didn’t know it as well as I could. The wonderful motherly women in my life all baked. My grandmothers. My aunts. My mother. Home baked goods were as common as beans on Saturday night, and through most of my child, just as unappreciated. Twinkies, Oreos, McCain frozen cakes, those for dessert lit up my world. Homemade cookies and apple pie? Boring.
Four decades and three children later, I stand in my kitchen with a notebook, tatters of wear and splatters of sauce creasing its sturdy crimson cover. Inside, pages full of my grandmother’s tidy penmanship, recipes for doughnuts and meat loaf and zucchini pickles consigned to paper at the urging of my mother. My grandmother cooked like she crocheted and lived for most of her life: never looking at a pattern, just knowing what to do.
Sweet smell of survival
At an age when girls were worried about their hair and what to wear on their dates, my grandmother became a breadwinner for her family. By the time she would have graduated high school she was married with an infant son and twins on the way. She cooked on a wood stove without digital readouts and convection settings. There was no microwave, food processor or yeast in neat little envelopes, no sliced bread at the corner store for those days when you were sick or tired or forgot that the last slice went into the morning lunchbox. Cooking was not a hobby or a pastime; it was literal survival. But she made it taste like a joy.
As my grandmother’s life turned grey and cool my mother set up in her kitchen with bowls, spoons, pen and paper, watching and asking and helping my grandmother set down a roadmap for the rest of us.
Ingredients and measurements, techniques and cooking time could all be captured and recorded. The joy, well, that could only be shared in two ways: our memories, and our daily lives.
Heart and Core
As a child, all I saw and felt was her joy. When I fell at the playground, she dried my tears and joined in my chorus of ‘Bad Swing’ until I smiled. She would read to me for hours and answer any of my hundred daily questions with clarity and honesty. She made me feel that time with me was the most important thing in the world, as she did with my mother, and I in turn learned from them that there was nothing more important than family. The joy found in millions of daily chores and unsung tasks … that lesson would take longer.
Four decades and three children later, in fact, when my children asked for fresh apple pie. My mother always made the pies, for every Christmas and Easter and visits in between. But this year as we isolated from Covid-19, there was no spring break visit, no Easter dinner with my mother at the table, no Grandma’s apple pie. So I stood, crimson notebook in hand. I remember a picture of my baby brother, barely walking, clad in Tshirt, diaper and a giant grin, his chubby legs swallowed by my father’s workboots in which he eventually clumped around the entire house. I had to fill shoes that felt would swallow me whole.
But maybe, just maybe, I could fill a pie crust.
Finding the Map
I flipped through the notebook, drinking in memories of cookies baking, my grandmother’s kitchen with its oil stove and neat little pantry and stalks of summer savory hung overhead to dry. I search crimson cover to cover but there is no recipe for apple pie. I call my mother. She chuckles. “I don’t have a recipe,” she admits. “I just bake them.” Pen and paper gave way to Facetime, as we walked each other through the process. How many apples? How high to pile them? How much sugar? How hot an oven? So many questions, and in the end, a partial map. She could lead me so far. I had to figure out the rest. Like good cooking. Like motherhood.
Grains of Truth
Success is in honouring the little things, the sprinkle of cornmeal on the bottom crust to absorb the moisture, the extra dash of nutmeg, the minutes added to the baking time because my oven is cooler than hers. Learn by doing, and sometimes, it will be messy, confusing, not what was hoped for. The joy is in the work, the satisfaction of turning a bag of apples and a few scoops of flour into a one-of-a-kind creation that can be shared and add something warm and comforting to the world. A mother’s hope for the meal she cooks, for the children she raises.
I baked a pie. It was good. It was appreciated. Thank God. Peeling six cups of apples is a hell of a lot of work. Making pastry that doesn’t stick or crack or fall apart is my penance on Earth. But the shortcuts would leave out too much of a journey I want to enjoy, minute by minute, task by task.
I thank my mother and the mothers that came before us for the recipes, the memories, their lives that led to mine. Most of all, I thank them for the ability to discover the joy for myself and make it my own. That is something I can feed my own children, long after the pie is gone.
Using the space of isolation to clear the workspace cobwebs
My indoor ‘hammock’, also known as my iso-nest, is part of my reframe to turn isolation into creative space during the Covid pandemic
This new normal of being home all the time has me isolation nesting like crazy. What is iso-nesting? For me it looks like cleaning, tidying, cooking, sorting, reading and reflecting, sometimes all in an hour. I’m like a ping pong ball let loose in a parking lot – suddenly so much space with no limits and no idea where to go next. It’s yielded some good things: my closet is now full of neatly-piled clothes I had forgotten I had, and shelves are now my own personal bookstore. But as self-isolation and social distancing become the new normal, I am turning my nesting urge to my creative business: the writing, and the earning of income from that love of writing.
Five ways my isolation nesting will serve my creative work:
1. Hammock time: not just for vacation any more
To the casual observer, it is a papasan chair in my office, topped by a dangle of white lights, in view of a candle and the window. To me, it has become my indoor hammock, my iso-nest, where I can sit, breathe, clear my mind, and write if the urge strikes, or not. It isn’t Hawaii or Italy, but thanks to my writer’s imagination and some vivid memories, it can be my Waianae or Camporsevoli any time I need it, which I am learning is at least 30 minutes 3-5 times per week.
2. Tidying my computer desktop
I am cleaning my desktop files and folders as I would my paper folders. Organizing files to keep into folders with names that make sense. Combining folders to eliminate duplicate files. Turfing any file or folder that no longer serves me. You know the ones. Folders full of to-dos and nice-to-haves and inspiration and such. Time to be real and keep the ones I am serious about using.
Seriously planning for those serious files –
to hold myself accountable, I’m making a plan for each idea and inspiration folder I’ve chosen to keep. What is my next step? When will I take that step? What is the end result? If I have no answers, I go back to step 2.
Giving my desk some love
And letting it love me in return. Placing files I use often within easy reach. Keeping only the bare essentials on my desk, so I don’t have to hold a notepad in my lap. Easing the clutter for the sake of tired eyes and mind. We are in a work of dual allegiance to tech and paper, so our workspace needs to allow both room and configuration to play nicely.
Taking Time to Read
Our elementary school teachers had it right. Reading time every day calms the body and fires the creativity. I have enough stockpiled reading material to last several years. No time like the present to get started.
Isolation is not vacation, especially for those of us who were already working from home. My nesting involves some of the hardest work I have ever done, coming to terms with how I waste my time, hide from my ideas and sabotage my creativity with stories of no time, too busy, too messy … you know what it’s like. And my nesting will continue long after we are again allowed to roam in public. But for now, investing a tiny bit of time in tidying my space – physical and mental – is freeing up a treasure trove of time to do whatever I want. Earn a living. Write. Nap. Listen to my kids singing Backstreet Boys songs in three-part harmony. Life demands a lot of us, but life is oh so good.
If you let out that breath you would change the world.
A professor said this to my son, but he could have been talking to me. Maybe to you, too. As a writer I spend a lot of time managing the swirling thoughts and phrases in my head but struggle to get them on paper. I work with fellow writers who long to hold their story in a manuscript but feel like they’re drowning. I know the feeling well.
So what can we do? Whether you are writing, composing, developing a business plan or envisioning a new organization, here are five steps to release your creativity you can start right now:
Breathe. This is no joke. That drowning feeling comes from holding your breath unaware. We hold our breath for many reasons: to keep quiet, to hold back, to tune out, to forget that we are made to shine instead of hide. I held my breath for most of my life. Still do when I lose myself in the chaos of old habits. My first conversation with astute women called me on this simple yet crucial point. You didn’t breathe the entire weekend, one participant later confided in me. Breath held can shut us down in an instant. Breath released is the flow we seek.
Own that the world will be better with what you create. Our minds race with stories that keep us quiet. There are lots of people doing this better than me. Is my story any good, anyway? What I do doesn’t really matter. I don’t really matter. In the grip of these thoughts and beliefs, there is no right or wrong, only choice. Do you choose to be that person who believes the talent they have is of no use to anyone? Or do you choose to listen to that tiny voice inside that tells you to pick up your pen or brush or guitar and give substance to the light you carry?
Break the Cycle. My son is a trumpet player, is young and healthy, and is doing what he loves: playing music and studying to be a teacher. But he’s struggling with endurance. As beautifully as he plays, he can only maintain his strength for half the time he needs to complete his first solo recital. His professor, observing his rehearsal, heard the majestic flow of notes … and saw zero flow of air. My son is literally playing against himself, taking in sufficient breath to fuel his creation then fighting against each note he releases. That’s so me, he sighs. No, my son, that is so your family tree, twisted with pain and blocks from ancestors and experiences long before he or I were born. Bodies have long and intense memories that can manifest in tension, aches or illness. We may never know the exact episode or moment that caused the original block, but we can be mindful moving forward to not let past hurts be our current reality. What we can choose for certain: we are worth it and will learn, practice, and be open to what it takes to do what we feel called to create.
Invite and Nurture your Team. Alone, there is no one to challenge our swirling thoughts or hold a lantern to the way out. Inviting and allowing people into your life who support you through shared beliefs and journeys, challenge you because they know and care, enjoy a good time and stay calm in the storms can help your creative flow as the tide nurtures the ocean: you receive what you need and give what you can. Like my son and his professor. Like he and I sharing our stories with each other. Like you and I right now.
Allow space to create. A river is a pond if it has nowhere to travel, and it soon dries out if there is no source of new water. From a distance a river may not seem to do much, but it is feeding, touching and supporting more forms of life than we can imagine. Our own creativity needs the same space, sources and respect as a river to keep flowing, feeding and supporting, whether for work, income, joy, goals, enjoyment, curiosity, connections or no conscious reason at all.
Fame, fortune, praise, promotion, or a quiet night immersed in pure contentment: it all begins with a single breath. Take one now, gently in, then release. You’re on your way.
Jennifer Hatt is a professional writer, publisher and author of the Finding Maria series.
A journal, a seat and a view can become an instant writing space
I once promised my muse I could teach him to play Beethoven’s Ode to Joy on the piano: five notes in five minutes. We will test that theory, when he makes the time to try it. Finding time to do anything today has become a nightmare of schedules, not to mention a cash cow for those in the organizer business. As writers, particularly those of us raising children and working day jobs to feed them, ‘finding time to write’ has become a well-worn phrase full of good intentions and shy of results. After a lifetime of writing for hire, I am now rediscovering the joy of writing for myself, no word count or deadline attached. That also means no money attached, which gets it pushed down my list right around ‘paint the kitchen’ and ‘build a flower garden in the front yard’ … nice-to-do’s which I may not live long enough to see completed.
Five Ways to Find Time
I have finally said Enough is Enough. I will get my Book Five ready for release in 2020. I will do it without selling my children or quitting my job, because on a dark day nobody would take them off my hands, and when I am truly honest with myself, neither of those areas in my life are to blame. It’s all up to me. Here are the five ways I found more time to write:
1. Own your choices
All of them. Granted, some choices are easier to make than others. Faced with cooking supper for hungry kids or watching Star Wars for the 37th time during movie night during what could be prime writing time, I will in this moment choose family because I can. But I also choose to distract myself with sorting my sock drawer, shredding 10-year-old receipts and watching fish swim in our aquarium (and before you judge too harshly they are real fish in real water, not a screen saver, and are absolutely fascinating creatures). Those moments add up to 30 minutes or even an hour of good writing time. When I feel that fidgety urge to engage mindlessly, I now stop, drop the recycling bag and pick up my notebook
2. Allow vs Find
That’s right. You are one verb from unlocking a universe of time and space. I have realized that all the time I need is around me nearly all of the time. What I needed to do is stop searching and start allowing: pausing, breathing, reframing. This is not magic or imagination. This is seeing the world as abundant rather than scarce. Trained to live a ‘productive’ life measured by the size of houses, bank accounts and bulging calendars, we have become most adept at filling space with stuff: clothes, electronics, appointments, errands. Take a look at my shower: for five of us there are enough bottles, soap dishes and loofahs to shampoo, condition and scrub a small city. Do you really want time to write? Then allow yourself that time. An hour less on the mobile device, 15 minutes of your lunch hour … you and your writing are worth it.
3. Sort into Projects
There are days when 2,000 words will flow from the fingertips as easily as air from the lungs. Other days, I have to rewrite a school note three times for it to make sense. To keep writing every day, I view my manuscript in layers and pieces that require tasks fitting wherever my brain is – or isn’t – in those moments, and the number of moments I have available. A free afternoon? That’s when I do my deep-dive contemplation and scene sketches. Sitting in the school parking lot? I have scene prompts on my phone, which in 10 minutes can turn into a decent chunk of chapter. Can barely get dressed in the morning? It’s a day to be gentle, when I sort through my journals and notes, toss anything o longer needed, sticky-noting or highlighting phrases that attract. Rather than the blanket ‘I don’t feel like it’ or ‘I don’t have time’, I have tasks at the ready rather than excuses.
4. Let it suck
The writing, that is. Writing is not like peeling an orange … words seldom flow in a single, continuous line. New writing often emerges disjointed, awkward, jagged. It looks nothing like you imagined and sounds like someone else’s story, until you review, edit, and polish it. None of those things can happen until the writing is out in the open. I too often cling to ideas until they fade or rot because I want the paragraph, or the entire book, to flow effortlessly in the first draft. If I had written my first draft when the ideas first came, my book would have been done years ago.
5. Find a Buddy
NaNoWriMo has been brilliant at getting novels everywhere out of minds and onto paper or screens where readers can enjoy them. Last winter I teamed up with my local library – I spend one morning a week there, an hour for me to write, and an hour I open up as a drop-in for anyone wanting to talk about writing. I have reviewed short stories, poem and novels in progress. I have chatted with people who write for hire, for pleasure, and for healing. Every conversation brings me closer to my own writing and the routine gives me dedicated writing time – an oasis in the sea of awesome chaos that is my life right now.
It’s in there
The time to write is there, just as your story is there. Some slight adjustments can turn a door into a gateway open any time you choose it.
Jennifer Hatt is author of the Finding Maria series. She is cofacilitating a Sacred Space writing workshop in Oahu, Hawaii for writers of all stages. Learn more at https://retreatinhawaii.com/writing-retreat
I am called to be a writer, but I was not born into the writer’s life. My past is a vista of gently rolling hills of a life on cruise control, precharted and unengaged. Very safe, highly productive, but a world away from the wild roller coaster plunging into the darkness and around corners unexplored, riding on faith, hope and the fantastic joy of adventure. As writers we create stories. Sometimes, the biggest story is the one we feed ourselves to keep us ‘in line’, on a route serving the narrow agenda of others rather than our authentic selves. After decades of chipping at the mind’s prison with the verbal equivalent of a bobby pin, my spirit is emerging, squinting, and slowly expanding into this vast new universe of a life free from ‘I can’ts’, “I shouldn’t” and ‘You aren’ts’. Sitting with five questions is helping me do that.
The Five Questions
These five questions are not true/false or multiple choice; they cannot be answered, checked off, and filed. For me, they serve as lampposts on a journey still coated in the fog of my past, giving comfort in moments of isolation, guidance in those times where I’m wondering where, or if, to move on. I’m still using them. Now, I’m moved to share them.
Why do I want to write? This may seem like a no-brainer, but sitting with this question was like taking a long look at the suitcase I’d been carrying unaware for so long, I’d forgotten why. Writing was something I always did, it got me through school and into a job, I had never made writing a conscious choice. Reflecting on the why allowed me to dumping that suitcase I’d been dragging for so long. I am sorting out what no longer served me: outgrown beliefs, dirty laundry, other people’s ideas …and make room for dreams and goals of my own.
What am I called to write? I started with a story for a friend. I am now on a journey within myself to places I didn’t know existed. For a time, I turned off my writing in the hopes of ending the journey. Getting honest about what I was doing allowed me to make the choice to keep going. it had nothing to do with knowing how to write, everything to do with aligning my desire with my actions.
How does fear manifest in my life? We all have fears, and thank God we do. Fear can be a powerful messenger and motivator, if we don’t let it take charge. Medicine can be a cure or a poison, depending on how we use it. Meeting our fears, getting to know them, then putting them in our place is part of what makes the roller coaster so exhilarating.
How do I nourish my creative spirit? For years, I didn’t even acknowledge I had a creative spirit. When its presence would not be denied, I fed it Doritos and margarita, not to nourish it, but to keep it distracted and quiet. I still love my Doritos (Zesty Cheese is my favourite) and a good margarita, but only in times when I am celebrating – the end of a chapter, a great conversation, the company of good friends – for it is these things that feed my creativity.
Who make me feel like a writer? Our world of commerce and tangible outcomes is rarely kind to the artistic soul. How many words did you write? How many books did you sell? These can be well-meaning from the curious or important in a business meeting but they can also be draining to a soul called to imagine, explore and discover new paths of expression. Writing is solitary but starves in isolation. Connecting with others, building relationships that feed and flow … that plugs you in to the limitless energy flowing through and around all of us.
It doesn’t matter what you’re writing…
… it matters THAT you’re writing. I have tried not being a writer, and it’s like turning off the pump to stop it from raining. My mind and body still generate ideas and stories; without writing they accumulate, overwhelm, and churn, until they leak out at the most inopportune times. Like 2 am. Or in the middle of a finance meeting. So, I keep the conversation going. Here, on my blog. And in January, in person on the island of Oahu in Hawaii. You can ready more about the Hawaiian retreat here. New voices always welcome.
It has been a tough winter, and one of transition. Where have I been for most of it? At the grocery store to feed my rapidly-changing family of teens, or at funerals to bid farewell to yet another beautiful soul called from our world to ‘home.’ Both sides, living and death with me firmly in the middle. No wonder I have the flu.
In the past week, two ladies have passed which have for me left a gaping ache in my life. I didn’t know them well, but in their presence, I felt they knew me, or at least wanted to. Beautiful, both of them, in every sense of the word. I met them in church, Bernice quiet and calm at her husband’s side, Muriel enthusiastic and active in any church event going. Vibrant in their own ways, always welcoming, always authentic, always time to ask about the children or my writing or how things were going. These were the qualities I admired: trust in faith, strength in self, optimism, generosity, smarts with just the right touch of sass. Watching them in action, thinking of their life experiences, I felt childlike in comparison. What have I done, what have I witnessed, compared to the challenges and bravery in which they lived and evolved? In their presence, though, I felt we could chat about anything and everything, solving the deep mysteries of life then sharing a few laughs over the antics of raising children or the insanity of politics. There was nothing about age, about circumstance, about education or experience. We were all simply women, united in faith, conviction and the greatness God made us to be.
Now, in their absence, I feel again like the woeful child. Who can step in to roles so dynamic as theirs, fill a space as brilliantly as their essence?
I know the answer, and I don’t like it.
Growing up, I was always the youngest – in my class, among my friends, with my cousins – and that became a great place to hide. We are taught to look out for the younger ones, expect less, help them more. As an adult, I still tended to have older friends and hang in circles, like church, where at age 50 I am still usually the youngest in the room. My hiding place is shrinking, however. I am transitioning from respecting my elders to being an elder and with every soul called home, I am inched a bit closer to the tipping point.
Despite what my kids say, I’m not old enough to step up and step in. I can’t lead like the elders I know and respect. I don’t have the experiences, the knowledge, the stories. I can’t speak of wars and jalopies and milk in bottles and lunch in tin pails. My historical reach consists of Pierre Trudeau and bell bottom Levis and telephones you had to dial. How do I inspire a generation with that?
Time marches on and I will be marched with it. I can ignore it, allow the child in me to defy reality and slowly fade away as a flame strangled for air. Or, I can honour the memory of those who inspire me – and they will continue to as long as I remember them – and step forward into the transition. Trust, welcome, gratitude, joy, confidence … those are the words that come to mind when I think of these great ladies and these are things that I can be, if I allow it. They will help if I ask. That’s just who they are.
Allow the ache left by their passing, allow the scenery to adjust, allow for new to grow. Getting older, but maybe never completely growing up.
A year ago, I knew nothing of Jim Swain, not even his name. Today, my perceptions of life are forever broadened and deepened for meeting and working with him.
That is the beginning and the ending of my story in what has been the adventure of getting this book to print.
Now, for a bit of the middle …
We met this past spring through a mutual friend, and as an aside, John Ashton and I have been getting each other into all kinds of fun for 20 years or more. He is but one of the many people in my life to whom I am grateful.
Our first meeting: over coffee for Jim and root beer for me, I learned of his story, was presented with binders full of writings and letters and clippings, and was asked the question that remains with me still:
“Is my story any good?”
First and foremost, your story is your story, just as my story is my story. There is no good or bad, right or wrong. It is yours and it is precious.
To want to share your story is often more about you than about the story. It takes courage, determination, and trust … for it takes a community to share a story. There is the author, the people in the story, the people who give the author space and support to work on the story and when I say space, I mean the time, the quiet, the hours and days and months that it can take from first draft to final product. It takes an openness by the author to let another person … or people … make suggestions, edits, and observations. It takes a whole lot of work and more strength inside than you can imagine.
And it was in that meeting, as I sipped my root beer, that I knew there was nothing Jim couldn’t do when he put his mind to it.
And thank goodness for us all that he did.
Reading though his binders and assembling his manuscript, I was drawn not only into his story, but mine. I knew of the places to which he referred in his dark times. If I had met Jim then, what would I have seen? Not much … I would have not doubt crossed the street to get away from him. I would have been afraid, or dismissive, perhaps mildly sympathetic but fully detached. And I would have moved on with my day and my life unaware.
As his story took shape on paper, however, I was drawn in through his eyes. I walked in worlds of which I had only heard. Yet I found that below the physical layers that separated us – the year he was born, the circumstances of his life – we shared the same determination, optimism, and fears.
One morning as I prepared one of the final drafts for Jim’s review, I spread the printed pages on my table and asked my mother to help assemble them in a binder. When I returned, I found her immersed in Page 44 – she had been reading each page as she filled the binder and was drawn deeper in the story with every word. By the time I found her, she was moved by the story and nearly in tears. She felt like one of the children in that high school class, watching Jim be humiliated, feeling heartbroken and utterly powerless to stop it. I quickly showed her the ending, and she lit up. Good for him, she said, I’m so glad. And until those pages appeared on my table she had never heard of him but instantly, she felt joy at his success.
That is the beauty and the power of a book. It is there for me, for each of us, to read and reread to learn of one man’s story, and to learn more of ours.
Each of the books we have published has been a window to another world that draws us more deeply into our own. The series that I have written is another little boy who has spent years telling me his story, and only recently could I own that the story was mine as well. Authors Mary Sheehan and Alex MacInnis also shared their stories through the wonder of a child’s eyes and the challenges that shaped them into the people they are today.
I am proud as a publisher to be part of Jim’s journey. More importantly, I am proud as a person to have learned from his story.
Congratulations, Jim. What you have done here is awesome.
Jennifer Hatt is author of the Finding Maria series and partner in publishing company Marechal Media Inc.
To see more of Jim’s book and purchase on line, click here.
Was there a reason I went to England, I was asked? I suppose there was. At the time, it was a vacation promised my 12-year-old, who as the youngest of three spent a great deal of time the past few years in airports seeing her siblings and/or mother off on trips, never to take one herself. “I like airplanes,” she reminded me plainly this past spring after yet another person’s travel plans were finalized. So, I promised her a trip, initially someplace in our home country of Canada. When a quick search had me utter in my outside voice that London was cheaper than most domestic destinations, my little Harry Potter fan launched her flight plan and within an hour had a complete itinerary of HP hotspots (with a Downton Abbey tour thrown in for her old mom) if we were to travel to England. So in Hawaii 5-0 fashion I booked it, Dano, and we prepared for five days and nights of London (and Oxford/Bampton/Highclere) in early August.
Was it a work trip, I was asked? A writer’s getaway?
Initially, no. I did pack a journal and pen. This was just five days of being open to all the firsts – new country, new city, and new role – that of leader rather than follower where travel was concerned. I’ve been a few places, foreign and domestic, but always as part of a family, group or partnership in which I was the least experienced. Never did I have sole responsiblity for myself, let alone my child, in a place where we knew nothing and no one. It turned out this trip was a most powerful invitation to that part of myself too long hidden, the part I needed to not only have a safe and awesome trip, but to write the stories I’m called to write, the live the authentic life I’m called to live, the part of ownership and trust in my decisions and actions, faith in the unknown, power where powerlessness too often festers and consumes.
Life is not a spectator sport, yet for much of my life I have been doing just that: observing, imagining … but rarely doing. I learned that from my parents, and they from theirs. Stay safe. Engaging in just about anything carries a risk. Be content with where you are and what you have. No need for more.
In a city such as London, however, there is more with every step: history, connections, awareness, invitations to delve into the past or create the future, all while committing the present to immortal memories. To stand in the shadow of a building that has weathered a thousand winters, to watch a street poet create an original artwork before your eyes, to meet people from all over the world who share the same interests as you – it’s all there, but you have to walk there and be open when you arrive. I had two choices: stay safe and stick to the street near our hotel, or trust that I can do what millions of people do every day, get on the tube and allow it to take me. Once the decision to leave the comfort zone was made, there was no going back. There were moments I was too exhausted to take another step, but what else can you do? There was no one to come fetch us, no way to get out of the station except up that massive flight of stairs. At one low point I am staring at a map of the stops, not recognizing a single name and saying out loud, ‘what are we going to do?’ The choices, no matter how unappealing, were simple. We either find a way home or stay the night right there in front of the map. We did the unthinkable. We reached out to a stranger. With their hints we figured it out, we as in my daughter and I, she at 12 with the wisdom of an ancient, me pushing 50 but in the moment going on 5. As fearful and frrustrated as those low moments were, her brilliance continued to warm my darkness and call me out. When I looked around, I realized we were far from alone and in fact, often knew more than many of the folks huddled over their maps, appearing desperately lost. The world is made up of all ages and abilities, reisdents and tourists, each a blend of lost and brilliant; the London Underground is a perfect slice of that to be examined and savoured, if you alliow yourself the space and time to abosrb the journey as well as the destinations.
The cashless ticket that gets you on London’s extensive transit network is an Oyster Card. Theories vary as to the origin of the name. As an oyster protects its pearl, the loadable card protects your cash and access. Hong Kong has the Octopus, so London kept with the marine theme. A play on the phrase “the world is your oyster.” Interesting that an oyster produces a pearl out of sheer irritation; that damn grain of sand that it cannot expel or ignore. London’s underground was the sand in my shell: each day began with ‘how will we get there’ and the gut-churning invited by the unknown. After five days, I did not have a pearl, but I did have a piece of my life back.
And I can’t wait to go back for more.
And I can’t wait to write about it.
Why London? It was what I needed. To show my daughter things are possible if you allow space to imagine, create and do. To prove to myself I am enough. And to let her show me children are far more aware than adults, that invitations are all around me if I choose to listen.
That may have nothiong to do with writing for some. For me, that has everything to do with my writing. Space. Listen. Do.
Thanks for being here.
Jennifer Hatt is author of the Finding Maria series and a partner in Marechal Media Inc.
