In the beginning scenes of My Fair Lady, Professor Henry Higgins furtively writes down (in linguist shorthand) what the main character, flower girl Eliza Dolittle, says and how she says it. A stranger walks up to her and whispers, “’Ey, there’s a bloke behind that pillar takin’ down every blessed word you’re sayin’.”

Eliza freaks out.

Well, I’m no linguist, but I was taking down people’s words at the mall. The bits I could hear, anyway. I got some strange looks, but nobody said anything.

You see, I’ve started a little playwriting club. So far, there’s only two members (including me) and we meet monthly to write together and share our work. One of our growth strategies is to use writing exercises. I’ve been reading The Blunt Playwright, by Clem Martini (Playwrights Canada Press, 2006).

One of these exercises, called The Playwright as Observer, was broken into two parts. The first part prescribes sitting in a public area, eavesdropping on conversations, and writing them down as accurately (and quickly) as possible. The second part of the exercise requires taking that stack of dialogue and turning it into a short scene, based on what stood out most during the conversation.

So we took this exercise to a coffee shop, along with a third friend.

My friends were late. When I walked in, there was only one guy there…a fiftyish man with short, thinning, silver hair. He was reading the newspaper. It was spread out in front of him on the table and he looked at it through chained glasses sliding far down his nose.

I sat down, and a forty-something balding guy in a business suit came in to buy a coffee and a newspaper, but he didn’t stay. He stopped to put cream and sugar in his coffee before rushing back out the door. He had dark eyes, red tie, sweater vest, charcoal overcoat. Lawyer, maybe? Chartered accountant? He clicked the cover in place and rushed out the door. He climbed into his big Ford SUV and drove away.

While I was taking notes on these people, it occurred to me that I should take a good look and then write stuff down, not write stuff down in between looks. People might get the wrong idea. Probably wouldn’t do to complete this exercise where biker gangs and hookers hang out, either. One might get trounced that way.

My friends arrived and we realized that if we were going to snoop in on people’s social lives we needed to do it in a busier place. We opted to go to The Mall, and once we were there, we separated. Two of them stayed in a busier coffee kiosk, and I decided to wander over to the food court.

I noticed a girl with purple hair and chains on her clothes. Sitting across from her was a girl wearing studs in uncomfortable places, it seemed to me. They were having a  passionate discussion about environmentalism in regards to oil and gas issues in the United States, and some documentary they needed to watch, and about some historical person in the US who took control of an untenable situation and changed it. And we should too, dammit!

Two problems: One, Purple Girl spoke in English, Studded Girl answered in French. They went on for ten minutes like that. It was unusual and interesting—too bad I could only understand half of it.

Two, it was difficult to find a chair close enough to hear without making it obvious I was eavesdropping. I could hear Studded Girl okay, because the sound of her voice was coming towards me, but she was the one speaking French.

I sat behind Purple Girl and leaned my head back a little so I could hear better, but I think I might have accidentally touched her head with mine once. Whoops.

Okay, so that didn’t work out so well. Too bad.

Then I sat next to a group of old geezers, six or eight of them, who were shooting the breeze around a table. I sat behind a tall pillar, just like Henry Higgins.

When I sat down with my pen and pad, they shut up. Seriously?

So I abandoned the food court. I wandered over to a seat in the middle of a hallway where two teenage girls were chatting and playing games on their cellphones.

The first thing I heard was, “Do you know what my mom’s obsessed with?”

“What?” asks second girl.

“Boyfriends,” first girl answers.

Don’t ask me what they looked like…this time, I didn’t dare look, in case they thought I was weird and moved away.

Once again, I couldn’t really hear very well. Blah, blah, blah…blah, blah, blah. And then, “Remember my neighbour, the one with the big glass gazebo? That’s her new stepmom.”

Then there’s silence while they play their games. “I suck at this one,” first girl says. “Time to get the bus.” And off they went.

Later, I sat next to a couple discussing their high-achievement daughter who was worried about her marks. “She won’t accept anything less than perfect—but even then…if she gets a 20 out of 20, she’s still not happy. Whaddya want, a 21?” Mom said.

These are all snatches of conversations, not whole ones. You might not think I got enough to go on, but it was an interesting evening. What stood out most for me?

I noticed that I made inferences about people’s personalities from how they were dressed and their mannerisms, combined with what they said. At first, I thought I must be sparklingly intuitive to come up with theories about who they really were, but this may or may not be accurate. Does a person’s dress describe who he really is, or does it describe who he wants to be? Does it describe who he wants other people to think he is?

You could write a whole story about that.

Regardless,  if you want to take down strange conversations in order to write better dialogue, I would suggest finding a quieter place than the mall.

Have a look at the dizzying array of convenience foods in our grocery store freezers and you’ll see how little time we spend in the kitchen preparing real food, at least during the work week.

Image of The Bourque House, courtesy restaurantidylle.com

The social aspects of eating together—savouring, not stuffing—are not practiced either.

No, instead we buy fast and filling. We chug large-size hamburgers, fries and soda pop in our cars between school, work and extra-curricular activities. High school and college students are hyped up on energy drinks that make up for their lack of sleep. On busy days, a pot of Kraft dinner is a quick fix. The term “social eating” refers to stuffing pizza and wings into our mouths as a group in front of the Stanley Cup final.

My evening meal with my husband at L’Idylle on February 14, Valentine’s Day, offered a glimpse at a different paradigm. Located in Dieppe, New Brunswick at the Bourque House, the oldest known Acadian home in the area, L’Idylle is a charming little French restaurant established in 2006 by husband and wife team Emmanuel Charretier and Hélène Legras. This French-born couple found their way to Dieppe after meeting and marrying in New York.

Looking around us, I estimated that the rooms of the house, whose inner walls had been knocked down and replaced by pillars would accommodate about 30 people. These same pillars created some intimate nooks and provided some sense of privacy for patrons in the wide, open space. We arrived at six, and by seven, the place was full.

My husband had done some technical work for L’Idylle a couple of years ago and was acquainted with the chef/owner, but yesterday was our first visit. It was an expensive evening…$230 for two people to enjoy L’Idylle’s nine-course tasting menu, but the experience was well-worth it and something I’ll remember for a long time.

Our fall/winter menu began with a piece of fresh baguette and whipped butter. It was crunchy on the outside, and soft on the inside, with a nice chew and stretch.  I apologize for not including any awe-inspiring pictures of the evening’s food. The dimly-lit interior provided a cozy atmosphere, but not great photos.

Mise en bouche was first, a teaser. This was my husband’s favourite thing of the evening…a spoon sat in the middle of a huge plate containing a mixture of smoked salmon and nori. The flavours were mild but distinct and left us wanting more—a tease, indeed!

Second was cream of butternut squash with walnut oil. This was delicious, one of my favourite soups. I’ve never paired walnut with my own squash soup before, but it was really yummy. A quenelle of whipped mousse in the middle was artfully cool and rich.

Shellfish velouté was the third course, a delicate combination of shrimp, scallop, clam and I think, calamari.

The fourth course was probably my favourite: lamb with risotto, so much so that I’m planning to make risotto this week. I could taste the cheese, but it was slightly sweet, too, and the lamb was super-tender.

Hélène brought in another piece of baguette for our plates, and then the fifth course, poutine gastronomic of lamb. Listen: nobody can be neutral about traditional Acadian boiled poutine râpée. You either love it or hate it. And no offense to my Acadian friends, but I am in the hate category. That purplish/gray-goo of boiled potato balls with pork in the middle is just awful. No amount of sugar or molasses sprinkled on top will make it any better. But L’Idylle’s version is different. The thin layer of crunchy potato on the outside appeared to be shredded in the traditional way, but then fried, not boiled. It was soft on the inside with tender bits of lamb confit from Champ Doré Farm, Grande-Digue in the centre. The ball was served with a cranberry-orange compote and it was delicious!

Course six was rabbit stew mediterranean style—the rabbit was stewed in red wine for a day, and sat atop a small pile of whipped potato in the middle of the plate. It was surrounded by carrot puree with ginger and a Brussels sprout, squash puree with beet, and a fried cake of chick pea flour. This was the dish I cared for the least, but it was still good. There was cocoa in the sauce, which gave it a bitter edge. Perhaps that’s why I didn’t like it as much. The rabbit was very tender–also unusual because I find rabbit tends to be dry and stringy.

Course seven was a fruit dessert of warm apples on a crunchy biscuit with butterscotch sauce and homemade vanilla ice cream on top. Not too sweet, it combined well with the richness of the homemade ice cream.

Course eight was a chocolate dessert and it speaks for itself: rum raisin ice cream in the center wrapped in a crunchy coconut layer and surrounded by chocolate mousse. The layered mound was dressed with a thin wafer and finished with a clear, sticky, fruit syrup.

We finished off our dinner with fresh-pressed coffee that sported a thick crema and was neither too strong nor too mild. Hélène served it with chunks of natural brown sugar and a pot of cream.

What I noticed about our evening was that the courses were tiny by North American standards and at such a high price, we expect more.  When we go to a traditional restaurant, even a fancier one, we’re looking for a big plate piled with food. Nevertheless, by the time we left I was comfortably full, not stuffed.

I realized that the point of a tasting menu is to taste. Detect flavours and appreciate them, let the chef’s choices surprise you and look forward to what you’ll see in the next course. In our everyday lives food is a practical necessity, but there are also times when it can be art.

And come with a list of things to discuss, by the way, because the several minutes that lapsed between courses added up to about four and a half hours. We didn’t leave the restaurant until 10:30 pm. So if you don’t have anything interesting to say to your restaurant partner, you’d better stay home with your box of egg rolls and bag of French fries and plunk yourself in front of the television.

I highly recommend this experience for your next special occasion. To make reservations check out L’Idylle’s website, http://restaurantidylle.com/.

In the dream, our intention was to renovate both those houses in order to sell them again. We would fix them up, put them on the market, and once they were sold, we would buy our dream home—wherever or whatever it was.

When I awoke, I wondered why I bought back our old place. It makes sense that we would renovate the house we owned currently in order to sell it, but why would you buy back something you don’t own anymore, just so that you could fix it up and sell it again?

I jotted down the experience in my journal and got on with life, but as the days went by, I began to realize what it meant. You see, one of my focuses lately has been about developing new vision—a new sense of purpose and direction. I was praying to God and meditating about where and how I should be putting my energies on many levels, not the least of which as a writer. Not just for 2013 or 2014, but for life in general. Where am I going? What am I doing here?

I believe that God may have been communicating that in order to move on and buy the next house (experience the new vision) I had to see the previous two (the old visions) in a more attractive light (renovate).

During our time in our first house, we were part of a ministry organization with lofty visions and goals that were left unfulfilled. It was an exciting, dramatic story that was cut short, like an adventure novel with the last few pages torn off—the reader can only guess how it might have turned out. After we moved on, regrets and disappointments lingered, so much so that over the years we sometimes wished we had never been part of it at all. You can imagine how this hampered our ability to dream big dreams again.

And so, as a practical exercise with spiritual consequences, I grabbed my journal and, spreadsheet-style, wrote down a list of positives that grew out of our experiences at each address. It took some effort, but I scribbled as many things as I could think of—my way of renovating those houses. The birth of our kids, quality of life, people we knew, lessons learned along the way. I shed a few tears as I realized how hard we have been on ourselves and how so many hurts and disappointments caused us to lose perspective.

When I finished these lists (that turned out to be quite long), it then set me free to imagine my dream home. What do I want it to look like, and most important, who do I want to be in it? It is a manifesto, of sorts, though just for an audience of one.

I share this rather personal story because I think it is a common tale, part of the human experience. We all have regrets that muck up the tapestry of our lives, but left unchecked, they will grow out of proportion in our minds and distort our image of the past. Such distortions will surely stunt our potential.

So now, I choose to look at it differently. There were good experiences among the bad. There were wise decisions and choices, not just mistakes. There were miracles. We were faithful to act on the best we knew at the time.

To further solidify the metaphor, today I set up our first family gratitude jar. The idea came from a photo that made its way into my Facebook newsfeed back in December. I cut up colour-coded pieces of paper for each member of the family, so that every time something struck them for which they were grateful, they could write it down and throw it in the jar. On New Year’s Eve, we’ll pull them out and read through the hopefully-large pile. It will be a reminder of God’s goodness and a moment to savour just how fortunate and blessed we are.

On the chalkboard, I admired the way he wrote in flowing, classical strokes and perfectly straight lines. By grade nine, when I had him as a supply teacher in science class, I didn’t worry so much about perfection.

However, I could at least perform cursive lettering, which is more than I can say for my youngest son, who is about to turn ten and in grade four. Learning cursive is supposed to be part of the grade three curriculum in this province, but because of the lengthy list of higher-priority requirements that grows from year to year, deciding how and when (and if) it is taught is up to the teacher. In my son’s case, it seems it was left off the list last year in favour of more important things.

Therefore, I’ve decided to teach him myself, even though the question that springs to the youthful mind might be, “who cares? He’ll spend most of his time typing or texting, anyway.”

A young friend of mine in his early twenties admitted that he can only print. He said he wasn’t taught how to write in school either, but it didn’t matter much because he spent all his time clacking on a keyboard, texting abbreviations and now he seldom picks up a pen except to sign his name.

It’s no wonder my young friend doesn’t write—he doesn’t need to. High school kids take notes and work at school on their laptops. Corrections are a snap and students rely on spell-check functions to point out their mistakes. There are no such things as hand-written letters anymore. People correspond by text, social media and email.

And wealthier new schools have classrooms supplied with smart boards, so even chalkboards are becoming obsolete.

How different things are now than in 1985, when I was in grade twelve taking a typing class. It was a course for the “business” students, but the academic students often took it in preparation for university.  It was also a required course for the math-oriented kids in the new “computer science” classes.

We learned to type on an electric typewriter and we were tested on speed and accuracy. Every mistake meant marring a flawless document that one had to redo, or fix with awkward (and obvious) correction tape.

As a Generation X’er, I can’t help but feel that I am straddling two worlds. “Mind the gap,” I hear society say. It is quickly widening and I know I must jump into the speeding train of progress or be left behind at the station.

Today, I still write longhand in scribblers or journals to get my ideas flowing before transferring them to my aged laptop. The blinking cursor on a blank screen can be very intimidating if the words are not yet flowing.  Up until now, I’ve carried a small notepad in my handbag to scribble ideas when they strike. Now that I have inherited an iPad from my husband, I’ve been carrying that around instead.

It just isn’t the same as the romance of a blank page that quickly fills up with henscratches: The connection of pen to paper, the flourish of letters, the flow of bright blue ink from my favourite pen.

The other day my friends and I had a lively discussion via Facebook regarding desk planners. Were they even necessary anymore, given that most people use their phones and other devices to plan their lives? I lamented that I had not received a 2013 calendar for Christmas. My husband suggested I use the new iPad he received—a generous gift from his company, but he didn’t need it, since his smartphone is the centre of his universe.  “There’s a great calendar app on it,” he said. “Why don’t you learn to use that?”

I panicked. The idea of adapting my daily life to a new technology gave me butterflies in my stomach. I’ve been using it, but it doesn’t feel natural.

Unlike my kids. They’ve grown up in an utterly connected world. Communication and entertainment technology seems to be an intuitive extension of their hands and brains.

And yet, they can’t write.

The question remains, do we lose something as a society when we abandon certain lower-priority skills or knowledge in favour of what is practical? Is this progress, or is it the extinction of knowledge?

I’m about to tell you.

Recently, my husband collected our oldest daughter from school for Christmas vacation. As they were leaving her place, they noticed an unfamiliar duffle bag on the front steps and wondered to whom it belonged.

Just a couple of minutes after entering the highway, they drew up behind a transport vehicle and in the distance, noticed a young man on a bicycle entering the lane and driving towards the truck. The truck changed lanes to avoid him. But the fellow matched the truck’s movements and though the truck driver tried to avoid hitting him without losing control himself, it was impossible to miss him completely. They collided and the boy flew through the air, pieces of his bicycle flying with him.

My husband pulled over and he threw his phone at my daughter yelling, “call 911!” He scrambled out and found the boy curled up on the ground, bloody but conscious. My husband peeled off his sweater and put it under the boy’s head, who was fighting to get up. My husband tried to keep him still.

The boy gave his name and said, “I’m homeless, nobody loves me and I want to die.”

Within minutes, an off-duty Mountie arrived and took charge. My husband waited for at least a half hour to give a statement. They watched the ambulance come and go and then called me to explain why they would be late.

By the time they got home, I was full of questions. So close to Christmas, my middle-class hustle and bustle was interrupted by the words of this young man barely out of his teens. I’m homeless, nobody loves me, and I want to die.

My life seemed so easy and my problems shallow by comparison.

I tried to imagine what winter (never mind Christmas) was like for someone who had no home and no family, at least none that were in a position to help him.

The next day, my husband called the home where our daughter stays (close relatives of ours) to relate the story. “Guess what happened to me on the drive home yesterday?” he said.

My husband had no idea that he was the bearer of bad tidings. Our relatives were waiting to hear news about a missing friend who had dropped all his worldly possessions on the front step the day before and wasn’t answering his phone.

Our relatives visited the boy in the hospital with trepidation, expecting to see him in grave condition, but instead, they were privileged to witness a Christmas miracle.

His only injuries were a cracked wrist, some bad bruises, and some missing teeth. No internal injuries, no broken bones.

Shall I repeat that for you?

Not even the cliché, “you look like you’ve been hit by a truck,” applies in this instance.

When we learned this, we marveled how someone could try to throw his life away for reasons of his own and still survive. Could he ever convince himself again that there was no purpose to his life? We supposed it was possible, but from our spiritual paradigm, it seemed unthinkable.

I also thought about how those tender years from infancy through adolescence are like snowballs. Without lots of fresh, packable snow under the right conditions, you just can’t get a good roll going.

This boy did not experience the right conditions. He couch-surfed for most of his adolescence and had no roots. Sometimes he had a place to stay, sometimes he didn’t. Now, at the time kids are usually off to college and searching for their place in the world, he is still trying to find a place to sleep.

Two nights before the highway incident he was looking for that place at a homeless shelter, but they were full. He spent the next two December nights under a bridge, cold and hungry. Then, in a moment of desperation, he decided that he would rather end it all on a highway instead of starving to death.

After several days at the hospital, our relatives decided to bring him home with them for Christmas. And I cried, because I have never been so generous, for all my spiritual talk.

They reasoned that he had nowhere else to go, and nothing else could be done for him until the holidays were over, anyway. The ball would get rolling in a few days, but until then…

So this is what Christmas—and the Christian life—is all about. Showing love to someone whom God has undeniably placed in your path.

We donate turkeys and buy meals for the homeless and supply goats for families in Africa—and all of that is great—but sometimes what people need is our presence. Sometimes it’s not about writing a cheque. The true work of the Kingdom of God is our willingness to share our lives.

At Christmas, we celebrate the idea that Jesus came into the world to rescue us from sin and thereby restoring our relationship with God the Father. If this idea has any merit at all, it should manifest itself in how we try to restore the lives of others.

Psalm 68:6…God sets the lonely in families, he leads forth the prisoners with singing.

Now that’s a big thing for a perfectionist to say.

My foray began several years ago when an organization I belonged to hosted a couple of weekend art workshops at our 11,000 square foot retreat centre in Dorchester. This event welcomed artists of all levels from all over Atlantic Canada.

At the time, I had just started writing fiction, but had no experience with art. I catered their meals and I washed dishes and made beds and I listened. At first, I smirked because they sort of…floated. They were lateral thinkers who spoke about art in ethereal ways and used jargon that I didn’t understand.

But on the other hand, they were non-judgmental, they appreciated every artistic attempt anyone made, no matter how juvenile and they managed to convince me that since God a) created the universe and b) created me,  His same creativity must also live in me.

Furthermore, since that same creativity is as unique and limitless as God is limitless, I could no longer use other people’s accomplishments as an excuse not to try.

I chewed on that for quite a while. Kept writing, working towards my goals. And then, one day a couple of years later, I picked up a brush.

I’ve taken no courses. I have gathered a little bit of knowledge from my husband, who is a talented cartoonist and from a growing stack of how-to books in my closet. But to be truthful, studying books with titles like Human Anatomy made Amazingly Easy just frustrate me—because it’s not amazingly easy. It takes lots of practice.

And why would I want to be frustrated when I’m doing something for pure enjoyment?

As an intuitive person, I approach almost everything in life intuitively: my work, my play, and the way I learn. I would rather just do it, and do it again…and again, until I develop some proficiency and achieve results on my own terms. This is the torturous, long way round and to analytical people in an analytical world, that method doesn’t make much sense. I’m a square peg in the Western world’s round hole. And as much as I’ve tried to be different, it’s the only way I can steer my brain.

Despite the amount of time it’s taken me, I’ve grown from this experience and I thought I would share three of my conclusions with you:

Painting has made me more observant. The way your eyes crinkle at the corners when you smile and the shadow your one little dimple casts—I see it now. The blueness (or brownness or hazelness) of your eyes, except that little bit of green in the centre; the colour of your hair—it’s not actually as dark as you think it is. Black isn’t really black. The grittiness of birch bark, how it curls and waves. The veins in a leaf, the shape of that lone tree on the horizon line, the way the paint peels off a deck. Before, all these things were just backdrop as I sped to my next destination. But I notice the details now.

Painting has emphasized the importance of savouring moments. It isn’t just the look of the waves on the water or the colours of the buildings on a cloudy day that I try to capture—it’s how those things make me feel. This painting of Italy, for example. I think about my niece who took this photo while in Venice. I wonder how she enjoyed her trip and the experiences she had there. I wonder what she was thinking as she stood on a footbridge and looked over at the next.

And this one below, of my daughter Sophie at the Bouctouche Dunes in Bouctouche, New Brunswick on a spectacular August day.  It was cool and cloudy, but the children played at the water’s edge and laughed while they picked up periwinkles and ran from tiny crabs. Everyone was happy.

The moment is gone, but it comes rushing back to me whenever I look at the painting.

Painting makes me see the world as shadow and light. It is at once simple and profound. All colour is light and all light is colour. Colours are dull on gray days, vibrant on bright days, pale in the morning, warm and rosy in the sunset. Which do I like the best? Even the dullness has a mournful beauty. Shades of green and yellow in the summer;  white fades to gray and purple-black in winter twilight.

The shadows and the light go together. Otherwise an image has no texture, no meaning. Without shadow, everything is flat, dimensionless. Shadow gives context to the light.

Interpret that how you will. I’m still chewing on it.

I say this because even though I paid my registration beforehand and rented my little car the day before, I almost stayed in bed when the alarm clock buzzed at 5:45. “What can they tell you that you haven’t heard or read before?” said Miss Sleepy Evil, the anti-Muse in my brain.

Often, the things you hear the most are the things that take the longest to sink in.

There was a very good presentation on the state of publishing, especially in the digital sphere by Cynthia Good, former editorial director at Penguin Canada and now director of the Creative Book Publishing program at Humber School of Creative and Performing Arts.

But that wasn’t what I chewed on all the way home. Instead, I thought about a few things the guest authors said, particularly Gerard Collins, winner of the 2012 Newfoundland Book Award and the Percy Janes First Novel Award.

Whenever I go to these things, I feel like an outsider, even though I’ve self-published a novel, I’ve had my first play produced and I’ve sold another, and I offer my copywriting services on a freelance basis. But if you ask me what I do for a living, I have a hard time saying, “I’m a writer,” out loud.

Why? Because I haven’t sold a manuscript to a publisher yet. I’ve come close before, but close doesn’t count.

It begs the question, am I a writer because I believe I am, or am I a writer because the writing community validates my writing by acquiring it and audiences by paying to read it? Perhaps that’s another blog.

Anyway, Cynthia Good moderated a panel discussion with Collins and Joan Clark, both from Newfoundland. She asked them the question that everybody wants to know: “How did you get published the first time?”

I appreciated Collins’ down-to-earth candour. He said “it was a long, long time” before he broke into publishing, gathering up a Masters and a PhD and a few years of teaching along the way. “I piled up several manuscripts and eventually stopped trying to sell them and wrote something new,” he said. “The simple answer was that they weren’t good enough.”

The words struck my heart, because my heart had heard them before—and protested. At times, these protests have been sad and pitiable and have other times been sour, like I just sucked the face off Cinderella’s stepmother.

Regardless, when I hear those words, I’m left with the choice to persevere or not. I wonder, do I really want to write? Or, as James Michener puts it, do I want “to have written”?

I have to tell you, more often than not, the answer for me has been the latter. And yet… I’m still here.

Collins’ subsequent anthology Moonlight Sketches flowed out differently than his previous work, the stories representing himself as a person. It was quickly accepted by a Maritime publisher. “It has to be the right person, the right book, at the right time,” he concluded.

Right person, right book, right time, I pondered. As I drove home in the pouring rain, I wondered, is writing like birthing babies? I had three uncomfortable, painful, sickening pregnancies and three long, difficult labours. I had always been jealous of those women whose bodies seemed designed for spitting kids out like one of those golf ball machines at a driving range.

I love my kids, but I didn’t love having them.

If I just keep writing, will there be a moment of grace where a subject close to my heart flows out of me like an easy birth, fully formed, pink and perfect? Or am I just the kind of girl who has difficult labours?

As my mother told me, “It’s different for everyone, dear.”

Collins was quick to add that though his first book required little editing, he went through an excruciating editing process with the second. What kept him going was his desire for excellence. “You have to make this the best story that it can be or you can’t live with yourself.” I appreciated his honesty, because if I can’t relate to genius, I can at least relate to working very, very hard.

And so I sit here at my little desk with my candle and my “Believe” rock and my favourite C.S. Lewis quote wondering if what I have to say will someday interest the world. When I come up with something good, hopefully somebody will notice.

Unfortunately, my grapes didn’t produce much fruit this year, only enough for about ten bottles of jelly. They need a really good pruning.

On the other hand, my sister-in-law Kim, who lives in another city, enjoyed an unbelievable harvest of grapes this year. And since I couldn’t bear to leave all of it to the raccoons and birds, I took home about seven or eight grocery bags worth, representing probably 60 or more bottles of jelly. I made about 47 before I ran out of energy (and bottles!). I froze the remainder of the prepared juice. I hate waste.

In order to reap such a harvest, Kim followed the advice of a tour guide who works at the family-owned Jost Vineyard in Malagash, Nova Scotia. She explained to Kim that grape vines need a severe pruning every three years, otherwise the vines will become so overgrown and tangled up that they have no energy for producing fruit.

Kim followed her advice. Last fall, she cut her grapevines all the way back until not a bright green leaf was left, just two gnarled brown sticks protruding from the ground.

“Well, that’s it,” she said, worrying that perhaps she had gotten too clipper-happy and killed them.

On the contrary. Fall morphed into winter, winter into spring, and new green shoots appeared. Kim said that every day they would come home from work and see measurable growth. The speed with which the vines covered the deck astounded them.

This September, Kim hit the motherlode. She had never seen so much fruit.

Of course, I can’t help but turn this story into a spiritual object lesson. There have been times in my life when I’ve read these famous words and thought them too harsh: “I am the true vine and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he trims clean so that it will be even more fruitful.” (John 15:1-2)

I’ve experienced hard situations in my life and I wondered if the Father was cutting me off, like a branch that bears no fruit. If I’d known then what growing grapes is really like, I would have known that such harsh pruning is not a sign of rejection: it’s an act of love.

Through the years, I have nurtured thoughts, beliefs and motivations that held me back and made me unfruitful. They were parts of me that needed to be shed in order to become more fruitful and productive. And what brings all those unfruitful attributes to the surface? Difficult circumstances, uncomfortable situations, either of my own making or someone else’s. And when they do surface, I always have a choice. I can allow the cutting away and let the renewing of my mind begin, or I can content myself with being unfruitful.

Not this fall. This huge harvest of grapes required plenty of work: hours and hours of boiling, stirring, straining. Pruny fingers and purple stains and careful measuring, so much that I wondered if it was even worth it. What am I going to do with 47 bottles of grape jelly? But that’s a whole other blog.

Trea (pronounced Tree-a) was 11 years old when we put her to sleep this morning. She was a purebred Cairn terrier complete with an award-winning lineage and papers. My Aunt Bernice made a very good living in the United States breeding these dogs and it was she who gave Trea to my mother when she was a puppy.

Trea’s mother’s name was Pennyroyal of Maple Leaf Farms, and in the pedigree tradition of handing down similar names, my mother named the puppy Leafy Trea.

A Cairn is a Scottish breed, first developed to catch vermin on farms. Toto from the Wizard of Oz was a Cairn. Small but mighty, Trea was born a brindle colour (dark brown and yellow), but grew black and bushy. Cairns are not very big as terriers go, but Trea was even smaller, the smallest of her litter.

My husband and I are not “dog people,” but our daughter Robyn is, and she wanted a dog badly. After much persuasion, she convinced us and my mother offered to give Trea to Robyn for her thirteenth birthday. Trea was six when she came to live with us.

True to her word, Robyn looked after Trea. She walked her every morning and afternoon, made sure she was fed and watered and cleaned up her messes. My daughter cuddled the dog regularly and told her to be quiet—this was a highly ineffective command for a dog that went ballistic every time the smoke detector was set off by the toaster (a daily occurrence).

Or when the doorbell rang.

Or when somebody new came into the house.

Or when she saw a chipmunk or another dog from her perch in front of the window. There was always something to bark at. Always.

But to quote Robert Munsch, “that teenager grew. She grew and she grew and she grew,” until Robyn started sleeping way-in on Saturdays and going away for weekends and attending sleepover parties.

So frequently, I also had to walk, feed, talk to and cuddle the dog, rain or shine, summer or winter. And we got to know each other.

When she was outside, she had to smell everything. Everything. We had many arguments about it.

Even though she was not much bigger than a foot-stool, she thought she was a Doberman. She would lunge at any dog, regardless of its size. We live in an age (and a community) where people treat their dogs like children and call them “baby” and frequently take their dogs out to “play” with other dogs…they all seemed so disappointed when they discovered that Trea was a Grumpy Gus.

I learned that she liked clementines. Like, went mental if you peeled a clementine and didn’t give her all of it.

She had an unlimited appetite for playing fetch…by the time the ball was a sticky, gooey mess and smelled of dog breath, that was enough for me. But Trea would simply go to every other person in the room.

And I never had to depend on the doorbell, because she barked non-stop when someone came to the door.

Until this summer.

She stopped eating, she was sick often, she was lethargic and preferred sleeping in her bed. She stopped getting up to see who was at the door. The house grew silent. And now, it will be hard to get used to the silence.

I wonder why Trea became ill this summer of all summers, the summer Robyn graduated from high school? Robyn leaves for college in two weeks and won’t be back until 2014. Maybe Trea just didn’t want to live without her.

If God has a place in the next life for dogs, I pray that Trea will be able to outrun the ball like she could when she was young and that finally, once and for all, she’ll catch all the obnoxious gray squirrels that she couldn’t catch outside our door.

Tonight, as my oldest daughter graduates from high school, I realize my most significant period of influence in her life is over. The thought strikes me with force. If I failed to live in the moment in all the years prior, now I must live in the past.

The first of our three children to complete high school, she heads off to college in the fall. This past week has been packed with graduation ceremony practices, preparations for prom night and goodbye-parties with friends. In the busyness, it is necessary to put aside any lament about the passage of time.

Until now.

I glance at my middle daughter and my young son, who are sitting beside me.  One just entering high school, one entering grade four. They are absorbing the evening’s energy and reflecting it back.

I know they will remember tonight, as I remember my older brother’s graduation. I also was in grade four.  I remember how tall he seemed. I remember his late-seventies baby-blue suit underneath his green gown and his long side-burns. I remember how I looked up to him, how I thought he could do anything if he really wanted to.

I remember my own graduation in detail, too—27 years ago. Twenty-seven! It was raining when my graduating class proceeded from our high school to the local hockey arena for the ceremony. The hair I spent hours curling around my green cap fell flat against my face in the pouring rain, and I spent the rest of the evening brushing it out of my eyes. I was overcome with emotion walking up the aisle. I don’t know why, but I couldn’t hold back the tears.

I wonder if my daughter will cry, too, or if she’ll take it all in stride?

My gaze sweeps across the groups of parents, grandparents and siblings filling the seats in the packed auditorium, all waiting to see their loved ones walk across the stage. There’s a crackle in the air.

When the bagpipers lead the students in, I pinpoint my daughter in the processional. She giggles with her seat-mates in the shoulder-shaking way she has done since she was little.

I never wanted to be the kind of mother who lives only for motherhood, the kind that finds her identity in her kids. I wanted to maintain some sense of self so that as freedom returned to me, little by little, I could reclaim my own purpose.

So this time, I am not weepy. Rather, I am happy for my daughter and I am proud of her accomplishments.

But this thrill of pleasure is tempered with a stream of tough questions.   I keep pushing them away but they persist all through the ceremony.

Did I do my job properly, I wonder?

Was I firm enough?

Was I relaxed enough?

Did I teach by example? Well, of course I did, but was it the right example, at least most of the time?

What is the common phrase these days? Oh, yes: “I want a do-over.”

Yes, as I watch the proceedings, I have the incredible urge to jump up and yell, “STOP! WAIT! I think I got a few things wrong—I need to do it all again.”

Unfortunately, like every other experience in life, parenthood is linear. A one-way road.

So, no do-overs, then. Which brings me back to living in the moment.  I assume that if I live in the moment I’ll make fewer mistakes, because I’m not mindlessly reacting to circumstances. I’m present. Dwelling in the now.

I dunno about you, but I spend lots and lots of time mindlessly reacting to circumstances. Is this even possible, anyway? It sounds god-like.

Perhaps most truths are better understood and appreciated in hindsight (hindsight means, “the day we really screwed up”). How can we truly appreciate a concept before we’ve seen it in action? If we’re observant, we can find ways to apply what we’ve learned to future situations, but we learned this by not reacting properly the first time round.

I believe that’s why the son who listens to his father’s instructions in Proverbs 13:1 is called wise. His wisdom springs from acting on what his father knows, not what he yet knows himself.  Once he acts on that faith, then he owns the experience.

After the names were called and the diplomas were handed out, we search for our girl among the throngs of people in the reception atrium. She’s probably posing for pictures with classmates and hugging friends, saying her goodbyes.

It is hard to find her and we wait for quite a while. She’s off, reveling in her environment. The shape of things to come?

As the crowds thin out we finally catch up with her. People are snapping pictures and she’s chatting a mile-a-minute with a few pals. Some pounce on her from behind and they explode in laughter. Her long blond hair, carefully flat-ironed by her cousin this afternoon, bounces below her cap, with the tassle hanging now on the right side.

I wonder if she’s going to be okay. Did we shelter her too much? She thinks she knows who she is and where she’s going—but on this one-way road, we all know the beginning is just a place to start.

She didn’t cry. She took it all in stride.