Beyond living and dreaming there is something more important: waking up. Michado.

+++They say Sleeping Beauty was 50 when she woke up. I don’t know who they are, and I have no idea how these fairytailologists came to this startling discovery, but I like what their research uncovered. I will definitely buy the book when it comes out. We all know that panicked hurry when we realize we’ve slept in and there’s an important appointment we have to get to. Well, I woke up very late and the urgent meeting was with my writing life. I decided I had to go big. Forget the bus. I was taking the Concord. I re-enrolled at U of T.

+++Confused expressions spread across the scrubbed young faces at the admissions office when this ancient science major came sniffing and begging around the English department. There was a creative writing course with a well known author and I wanted in. They punched in my student number and the system crashed, “Ma’am, this can’t be right, the number has to start with nine or zero.”
+++I sighed, “If you graduated in the seventies it starts with a seven.”
+++“The seventies!” He studied my face, trying to comprehend why I wasn’t dead yet or at least knitting somewhere in Florida. Next, came the terrifying requirement of submitting a portfolio. I carried it around for weeks, unable to drop through the mail slot what felt like naked pictures of me (insert very scary visual here). Spurred on by the words of a wise woman, oh let’s hypothetically call her Ruth Walker, “Get naked girl and let the epiphanies fall where they may”, I leapt. I landed in a class of fresh, creative minds, most of them younger than my children. Fear abated when I discovered I was with a group who did not measure me by years, but by wisdom and experience. I was a fierce dragon sitting on a literal (or perhaps literary) mountain of treasure: my life.

+++One night, an ambitious young writer escorted me to my car, insisting that I needed help carrying my coffee mug and two books. He gave me a wonderful gift on the walk. “I love your stories. Your first one made me laugh out loud. Your last one made me cry. I never cry. I only imagine the ocean you’ve swum in it. Don’t stop writing, I want to read it.”

+++I dare say I’ve had a great deal more than a swim in this great ocean: I’ve floated, struggled against the current, drifted, treaded water, played, been sucked under, chest crushed by the pressure and pulled to the surface by grace. These are my stories, and I am soaking wet with them. There were times during the course when I questioned my sanity. After all, I could have opted for the session at my local college: When Life Unravels, Learn to Knit, 101. One night, after a particularly brutal critique had left my work in a ravaged heap on the floor, I considered switching my major to flower arranging or Tai Chi. I came to realize that as much as praise is silver, criticism can be gold. My professor said to me, “I may have been too hard on you. I wouldn’t have been with anyone else in the class. I just believe there’s more in you, something beyond what you gave me.” He was right, there was something more, something deeper, and he made me reach for it. I believe his comment is true for every writer. There is more depth, more magic, more power in all of us. We just have to be fearless and leap, surrounding ourselves with a cheering section that shouts, “Jump! Jump! Jump!” And refusing admission to those who don’t.

+++I took the course wanting to learn how to improve my writing, and I think I succeeded. However, improved skill made up only an inch or so of the mile I gained. The greatest discovery was that my life, with all its ragged edges, failures, griefs, wrong turns, right turns, joys, disappointments…every last scrap of heavy metal, is gold, even the years barely breathing, pockets leaded, submersed in black water. Once sunlight pierced the depths and my eyes adjusted I discovered things in the cold, dark places that could never be seen from the surface. I’m learning to let go of the regret of waiting so long to take up my pen and write. Instead I’m congratulating myself on conducting 50 years of brilliant, intensive research. I expressed to my professor my fear that I’d waited too long to start my creative writing journey. He said, “You can never start writing too late. Some start too early, but it is never too late to begin.”

Published in the Word Weaver July/August, 2006
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