Early Efforts at Writing

When I first figured out, at some preschool stage, my mind was totally blown away that letters form words. A miracle! I couldn’t stop marvelling at the genius who had invented such a way to portray imagery and display thoughts. I was hooked on both reading and writing. I soon started to try the writing process myself, when I could tear myself away from reading. I was an addicted to both.
First, copycat stories, then poems, then stage plays. By the time I was in grade six I was writing, in a lined scribbler, a novel about a family of six loveable children. I read part of a play I wrote to my class line-up about a kindly grandmother who was dying and two of my friends began to cry. What a feeling of power! I wrote all the way through high school, too. Passionate poetry about the injustices that existed everywhere…especially about the injustices I saw in the small city of Trail B.C. And plays too for the Drama Club.Where did all this material end up? Dumped in the garbage, I guess. It obviously didn’t impress my parents. And I lived so much in an imaginary place that I never thought to save them myself.
During my early married years, as I raised five children, I took great comfort in writing long weekly letters to my parents and in-laws, filled with anecdotes and sketches. For more than ten years these were my creative outlets. Again they ended up as garbage. Only the occasional painting I managed to create would get me any family attention.
But as my children grew and started flying the coop, despite attaining some small fame as a ceramist and painter, I returned to writing: Writing to help me cope with depression. Which it did.


Here’s an example:

White Birds
Written 0ctober 1988


I planted a garden of white birds,
Placed smooth eggs so straight in a row.
In pale-colour eiderdown soil
I laid them so gently below.

I covered them with layers of blankets
As soft and as clean as white snow,
And I shone my bright spotlights upon them
And sang words to help make them grow.

Soon they grew bigger and swelled forth;
I bathed them with sweet water flow,
And one day they all sprouted so wondrously
I marveled to see them all so.

They stretched and they leaved and they blossomed
Put on a most rewarding show,
And my heart ached as I clipped all their rootlets
And watched one by one fly up and go.