I am a "homebody". Place is important to me. I know light-footed travelers, people for whom "Home is where I hang my hat," or more sentimentally, "Home is wherever the people I love are."  Home is both of those things to me - a place to put my things, a place to love and be loved -  but there it is, in both those definitions - a place. Home is the place you belong. The place where your roots are nourished. The place where your roots are. I am a person who needs a place to put down roots.

So it's no surprise that so many of my childhood memories are of a tree. This tree. It grew beside a stream in the fields behind the street my house was on.

I grew up under this tree. In the summer, I climbed it, and built dams and caught frogs in the stream beside it, and picked wild strawberries and played with my dog in the fields around it. In the winter, I skated there, and built snow forts. I ran to my tree with all my childhood upsets to sit alone under it, until the sight of the sun in it's branches and the sound of the wind rustling its leaves eased my hurt or anger or sorrow. It never failed to entertain or comfort me, this tree.

I spread my wings and went off to university; and when I graduated, I spent three months backpacking around Europe. It was a difficult, sometimes lonely, but often exhilarating trip, and I have never lost the love of travel it engendered.

Nor have I ever forgotten coming home again, and sitting at the kitchen window with a cup of hot tea, watching an early snowfall, silent and pristine, float through the air and settle over the fields and tree that were so much a part of me. I grabbed a pen, and a piece of paper, and I wrote this poem, which sums up, for me, the difference between wings and roots.

FAMILIAR FIELDS

My travels are a dream
that held me
fitful and unresting
through the night.
The countries I have seen,
the castles and cathedrals
of the world,
are photos out of focus
in the sudden clarity
of snow
falling on familiar fields.

Hello OM&B Blog Challengers,

I am posting from sunny Florida, on the last day of the Florida Writers' Association Conference. Normally, I would be sending the participants in this blog challenge an email reminder of this upcoming week's theme and the three odd-numbered days on which we'll all be posting - October 21, 23, and 25.

However, I foolishly forgot to bring my list of all your email addresses - it is sitting on my computer desktop at home. So I hope you are all checking in and will see this, and I will send an email as soon as I get home on Oct. 23. Sorry about that.

This week's theme for Week 4 is: Roots and Wings. Memories/poems/pictures of home, of leaving or finding it, and/or of travel or journeys or changes. Where we have come from and where we are going: A theme that is often rich in imagery and emotion.

Oh, and since this is my last post for the week of secrets, here's one: It's something that you are going to be the first to know. Last night, at the Florida Writers' Association's Awards Dinner, my novel, the Sorrow Stone, won first prize in the Historical Fiction, unpublished, category. You can read the first chapter on the page, Historical Fiction, on this website.

I hope you agree with the judges' decision!

It seems to me, an author's professional relationships are particularly tricky. Let's examine the traditional route: an agent, a publisher. We're told a publisher will try to get every right away from us, take the baby with the book, for the rest of our lives. Publishers are portrayed as the modern-day Rumplestiltskins of the world. THAT's why we need an agent. To protect our rights, get us a good deal, make sure we get paid on time, etc.

Years and years ago, I signed with a terrible agent. She wouldn't talk to me, refused to tell me where she'd sent my book, sent my ms to the wrong address of an editor who asked me to send it to him during a conference, told me two publishers wanted to see something else from me, but she'd lost their names... If she'd been my boyfriend I'd have dumped her at once, but it took a more experienced author telling me to get out of the relationship to make me fire her.

Earlier this year, I worked with a publisher who's great. He let me alter anything in the contract, but showed me how things are related - these are his production costs, this is my royalty rate, this is the bookstore's cut, this is his profit if we sell the book at $X, or $Y or $Z. "You pick," he said to me. I asked about the clause in the contract about foreign rights. "We can take that out," he said. "If you get a better offer than my small production in England, I'm not here to stand in your way." Ended up, I became more concerned about protecting his rights than my own. (Warning: even among small publishers, this is very rare.) He was a dream to work with. I hope he makes a lot of money on my book. I feel like I'm marketing it for both our sakes.

And now I have an agent. I really like her. Despite the disparity in our ages, we are in many ways alike. I love her enthusiasm and energy, she emails me updates regularly, suggests good changes to my ms and accepts it well when I reject some of them. We write emails to each other with lots of exclamation! marks! in them!! (NOT the way I write a story, but kinda the way I talk and definitely the way I email) She loves my writing voice and I love her email voice!! We're a good fit. She works hard for me, and it's important to me to be working with someone I like and trust.

But the traditional route is S-L-O-W. And I have three SF manuscripts, which I wrote when I was starting out, and she doesn't rep SF. So I'm thinking of going hybrid, which means using both routes. Polish up these previous novels for self-publication, and send her my memoir and historical fiction for the traditional route. We discussed it before I signed, and it's good with her.

Now what's interesting about this is, if I self-pub, who is my professional relationship with? Why, it's with my readers, directly. I'm not writing for my agent or a publisher's tastes, but for my readers. No one but them will tell me what will sell, or whether I can cross genres, or how long the story should be. They'll tell me democratically, not autocratically - by voting with their money. I really like that relationship.

I like the concept of being a hybrid author - I think it's the best of both worlds. But it's a little sad that I needed the agent and the publisher telling me my work was good enough to be printed, before I had the confidence to decide to self-pub anything.

So now I'm asking myself, What is it about this topic that freezes me? (See previous post to understand what I'm talking about)

It isn't that I don't think interpersonal relations are important - in fact, I think they are more important than anything else in life. It's not that I can't maintain a relationship - au contraire, I almost NEVER lose people. If you become my friend, it's a life-time sentence. I HATE losing anyone. I mourn every friend I'm no longer in touch with. I go to extreme lengths to hold onto people. For example, I've been married to the same man for 37 years. Can't stand him. Never could. But I'll be damned if I'll lose him! (Okay, that bit about my husband is a joke, he's really a nice guy, although there have been a few times during our marriage when I've been tempted to misplace him for a while...)

Relationships. Well, here's the important thing to remember, the only thing that really matters: people die, and there's nothing you can do about it. You can never have them back. You can never spend another hour with them. So whoever you care about, as long as you both care about each other, hold on to them with everything you've got, like nothing else matters. Because nothing else matters.

I don't mean don't fight. The only time people don't disagree is when one is afraid to disagree with the other. Not healthy. I don't mean stay in a violent or emotionally harmful relationship - I am not a proponent of abusive or enabling relationships. But there are people who love each other - partners, friends who were once very close, siblings, parents and children - who haven't spoken to each other in years. They let go. Before they had to.

Not me. They'll have to pry my white-knucked fingers loose from the people I love to put them in the grave. And nothing short of death will do it.

That's all I've got to say about relationships. That's all I know about 'em.

Last year a bunch of us had a blast writing memoirs in October - either our own, or as back story for our characters. It was great seeing how creative everyone got with this concept, and I know it spurred me to be more creative in my own blogs.

I hope you'll all come back this year, as well as lots of new bloggers joining us. I'll be making some changes based on the feedback from last year, and I'll post those in mid-September. Until then, here are some things you can do to get ready:

1. Decide how you're going to use this memoir: to share pivotal events from your past? To explore the art of writing memoir? To get to know your fictional characters' past? To prepare for NaNoWriMo? To capture the past in photos or poetry? Whatever works for you, works for this challenge.

2. Read about last year's challenge in past blogs on this page. Maybe check out what some of last year's people did on their blogs during this challenge.

3. Sort through old photos, old poems, and random memories and upload or type out onto your laptop any you might want to use.

4. Tell your friends and blog readers about it so they can get ready to join the fun.

5. Come back in mid-September to read about this year's challenge and sign yourself up!!

At twenty-four, I went to grad school. (Linked to post)

In the winter I start to get sick. It gets worse. The campus doctor increases my medications, but the stress of grad studies has caused a flare-up of my colitis, and I continue to worsen. I am wracked by abdominal cramps, depleted by exhaustion, vomiting, feverish, and spending hours in the washroom, day and night. The doctor wants me to go home and see my gastroenterologist.

"I can't," I tell him. I am now 2 & 1/2 months short of completing my courses. In those days, courses were year-long, not one semester. If I leave now, I'll lose my whole year. Not going to happen. Somehow I make it through to the end of classes, and earn an A- average.

Back home I rest, and improve a little. I take a summer grad course at U. of Toronto for my final credit, and work on my thesis. The date to defend my thesis is set for early September.

By the end of August, I am beyond sick, but still refusing to quit. Ian finally makes an appointment with my gastroenterologist and half-carries me to it. After a short examination, he orders me straight into hospital; I'm not even allowed to go home for my toothbrush. I'm in hospital 6 weeks; that's where I spend my 25th birthday.

My summer course grade comes back: A-.  My thesis adviser writes to tell me I have missed my defense and that's it. No appeal; I'm out. All along I have been a number for him - one of the 50% who don't complete - and now he has proof. He doesn't say this, but it's there, between the lines. I appeal to the Chair of English Grad studies. My gastro gets his receptionist to write a letter informing of my condition. I never see this letter, but this is one formidable lady, believe me. I'm relieved but not surprised when the Chair writes back assuring me I can defend my thesis when I get well.

And so, just before Christmas, I go to Ottawa to defend my thesis. My adviser gives me a pep talk just before it begins: "They're going to give arguments against your thesis," he tells me, "But don't agree just to be nice. You have to argue back." I'm 5'2, eyes of blue, and I'm sure I still look thin and wan and weak. He expects me to get slaughtered. And I'm sure his only concern is that it will reflect unfavorably on him.

I manage to keep a straight face as I assure him I will. I come from a family of debaters; I argue in my sleep. And so I walk in and it begins. What a blast! I love debating English, I'm quick on my feet, and this is my thesis, I know it inside out. I'm genuinely sorry when it comes to an end, and wish I could think of a way to keep it going. Outside the room, my adviser looks at me speechless for a moment, then tells me I did very well.

And so I have my M.A. But it has taken it's toll. I know I can't get my PhD. I will never be a university prof. This is the road not taken.

We can spend our life in regret over the road not taken, or we can focus on the road we did take. Two years later, I have the first of my three daughters: an all-consuming love. And many years after that, I am a college prof, instead of a University Prof. I don't teach 18th C poetry or even Can Lit - I teach business writing and Ethics, drawing on my undergrad minor in philosophy. But I enjoy the teaching. And in between, I have done a multitude of interesting things.

The road not taken is not always a tragedy. Often, it is just the road not taken.

What is the road you didn't take? Do you regret it? Did you find another road?

Despite my diagnosis of Colitis, I complete my Honours B.A. and apply to Grad school. The plan to get my PhD and teach at University is still intact.

Three of the four I apply to offer me Teaching Assistanceship incentives to come. I accept Carleton U., because Ian has applied to two Ottawa papers and we hope he will follow me. Instead, The Globe & Mail, in Toronto, offers him a job, so we are apart for the year that I am doing my course work. Just as well - in an effort to get on with my PhD, I take all my courses at once, planning to write my thesis over the summer, defend it and start my PhD  next September. Did I mention having the quality of impatience?

The first hurdle is to find a prof to work with me on my Thesis. I have decided to study Canadian Literature, thinking it will be more practical than 18th C or 19th C Poetry, which I love. Unfortunately, nothing in our literature really speaks to me; I am not a modernist. This does not make me an interesting candidate to work with. I am told "50% of M.A. students never finish. I haven't time to take on another." One female Prof baldly tells me she "doesn't believe I have what it takes." Finally, with great reluctance, one takes me on.

I sign up for five courses, treating myself to one Drama and one Shakespeare course: the rest are as dull as I feared Can Lit would be. One of those is with the prof who thinks I don't have it in me to get an M.A. She is one of those attack-prof types - she pounces on the student who obviously doesn't want to be called on and berates him/her soundly for not having read the assigned pages or not giving the answer she wants. In the first class after my unfortunate interview with her when she refused to take me on as a thesis student, she calls on me, as I hide behind my text, to explain the meaning and significance of a passage.

Grad school is grueling. I work day and night to keep up, and still don't always get the readings done. (Maybe because I'm taking twice as many courses as most of my grad colleagues?) At any rate, I am madly reading the passage as she hesitates, letting us sweat, before she picks me as her prey. I look up into her wolfish grin, see her holding her breath, her eyes hungry as she prepares to demolish me.

And I begin to explain the passage to her. Let me tell you, I can barely add two 3-figure numbers. Geography and science are foreign languages to me - no, worse, I'm pretty good at languages. But English? I am a whiz at English. Having whipped through the passage for the first time in the few minutes it took her to ask her question and choose me, I begin to explain it, ideas coming to me as I speak, getting more and more interested in this stupid text as i delve into it, all off the top of my head - and I see the grin on her face fade, replaced with surprise, disbelief, a fading hope that she can find something wrong or lacking in my answer, and finally, re-evaluation of me. When I am finished, she stammers, "Yes...well.. very good," and hurries on to the next passage.

I walk out at the end of that class, go straight to the admin office, and drop her course.

After returning from Europe I get a job and work until the end of August. Ian and I are married on Labour Day weekend. I turn 23 on my honeymoon.

I hate to admit that this is a difficult and unhappy year. I move cities to Oshawa, where I know no one, and commute into York university to finish my last two credits - the goal of getting my Phd and teaching is still in place. I have too much free time, even with 2 part-time jobs, and Ian, at the beginning of his career, has too little. The adjustment to marriage is hard, and I'm sure I've made a terrible mistake.

To complicate matters, I'm ill. One day I faint at University, and immediately take the bus home. I mean home, not the one-bedroom apartment I share with Ian. I want my Mom!

Three months after the wedding, I am hospitalized in Toronto and diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis. They'll fix me, I think, but I soon learn that this is not a fixable disease - it will be with me for life. Medication is prescribed, and I improve, although it never goes away. I am not one of those who go into remission. Instead, I learn to build a life around it. Not the life I imagined, but a very good life, with my loving family, many good friends, my wonderful daughters, and a husband who stands by me through it all.

What more can one ask? A lot. Everything is not possible, as I thought, standing on the threshold of adulthood in University. Pain, illness and fatigue remove a lot of options.

But there are compensations: since I can't work, I meet many wonderful people volunteering, and I get to stay home with my children, an option I would have wanted anyway. And thank God I live in a country which has excellent health care and considers that a right, like schooling and roads and police and fire services, not a luxury only for the rich. No matter how often I'm in hospital, we don't lose our home or our car, or suffer the shame of bankruptcy, or have to fight an insurance company for the treatment I need. Thank you Canada!

Colitis teaches me to count my blessings; to ennumerate the things I'm thankful for every day; to notice happiness, and nurture those things that increase it; to be grateful for things I might have taken for granted. Would I have liked a life free of illness? You Bet! Would I have been happier? I'm not sure..

What curve-balls has life thrown at you?  How do you view them from the distance of time? Did they come with hidden blessings?

I have worked and saved all the summer of 1975. I've bought my Eurailpass, my Youth Hostel card, a map of Europe. Goodbye Canada, I'm off to explore the world!

Paris (look right through backpackers), Rome (every female backpacker was fair game) , Venice (magic maze of a city), Florence (breathtaking and friendly, I fell in love with Florence), Pompeii (see these ruins last, because all others pale after you've seen them), Athens: so many magnificent sites to see. Here's the Acropolis in Athens, seen from the top of the hill it's built into.

Driving down the coast of what was then Yugoslavia. Men and women working the fields dressed as 19thC peasants, a poor, cold, beautiful land. This picture hardly does it justice.

Switzerland, and the best youth hostel in Europe, a chalet built into the Alps. Hiking trails everywhere - rebel that I am, I left the trails, climbed my way onto a slide that started to give beneath me - lucky I didn't break my fool neck! Here are the Alps seen from a ledge I scrambled onto, trying to find a safe way down.

On to Austria, and Germany. Here's the concentration camp, Dachau, where I wept.

Amsterdam (Anne Frank's house) and Belgium ( where an elderly woman took me in because the Youth Hostel had closed - it was November by now). Her kindness, and that of a few others, stands out. The old cities of Europe tolerated us - barely. Young kids, tourists without any money, drifting irreverently through the stately treasures of their cities.
It was exhilarating, educational, hard work, sometimes scary and often lonely, but I'm so glad I did it. And by the way, it's cold in Europe in November!

EUROPE

An alien fog,
couched by weeds
whipped white with frost.

Frost stalks me also
knowing that here
I am a weed
ugly and uninvited in this land.

I find in motion
temporary warmth
leaning from trains or pocketing my hands
and hurrying through narrow streets,
with buildings rooted firmly
by countless cameras.

I drift like litter,
walking graffiti,
through their cities.
The frost
follows my footsteps
and the warmth of a colder land
calls to me.
   *


Do you remember your first trip on your own? What was it like?

This is my final Undergrad year, and as spring approaches, I cut loose: I get drunk 3 times. It's pretty safe because the parties are all on campus and I'm with my possee of girlfriends. The third time is a party thrown for graduating students on the evening of the last day of classes by the college Master, who has an apartment on the ground floor of our dorm. My Mom arrives the next morning to take me home for study week before exams begin. I sleep in, waking minutes before Mom's due to arrive. I grab my wastebasket, which I threw up in during the night, and run to the washroom. When I return after washing it out, Mom's waiting in my room, and it's pretty obvious that I threw up and slept in my clothes. Typical of Mom, she says nothing, and I, embarassed, also say nothing. We both ignore the elephant in the room (a pretty smelly one) as I pack a suitcase and slide into Mom's car.

I have been very happy at York University. Oh, there were boyfriend issues and such - but I lived with a fantastic group of girls, and for the first time, I'm not out of place here, with my penchant for debating and love of reading and passion for literature and philosophy. In fact, I've decided to go for my PhD and become a university professor! But this year, all my friends are graduating - some to go on to teacher's college or other training, some into the work force. I decide to graduate with them, even though I need an Honours degree (4 years, not 3) to go on - but I've been taking extra courses each year, so I only need three credits, and decide to take them individually.

I have a summer job with the Department of National Defense - my second summer with them - writing press releases for their exhibitions and displays events. I sign up for a summer course to get one of my credits.

I take the bus to Ottawa in the break between classes ending and exams beginning, to do the paperwork for the summer job. On the bus ride home, at the half-way point, a young man holds the door open for me. Nice. I'm impressed. When we re-board the bus, which is half-empty, he asks to sit beside me. We talk all the way to Toronto, and he asks me out to dinner.

After dinner, he asks to see me next weekend. Our first date - he is two hours late. He's a journalist, and a story comes in at deadline, and he doesn't think of phoning to let me know. I wait and wait. My girlfriends begin to pity me. "No," I tell them, "He's coming. I'm sure of it." They pity me more. And more. And more. Finally they convince me to get changed back into jeans and go to the college pub with them.

On the way out the door, guess who finally shows up?
Yup, it's Ian. And he is surprised I doubted him. I don't know whether to be relieved or ticked. I settle on both.

Within a month we are engaged to be married.

The date is a year away, because I have already made plans to backpack around Europe with a Eurail pass and a Youth Hostel card for 3 months when my summer job ends. I will leave right after my 22nd birthday (on Sept. 10), and get home in time for Christmas. But that's a story for my next post!

How did you feel leaving college? Were they the "best years of your life" - or the worst?

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