Look at this girl. Look at that smile.
I believe I was a happy child. I did get in trouble, some would say 'a lot'. For my part, in looking back, I think I didn't get in enough trouble, at least not the kind that I could look back on now and say, "Wow, that was fun!" I wasn't perfect but when I think of myself as a child I think of someone who wanted to be happy. Wanted to laugh. Wanted to run and play and be 'just as good as the boys'. But I never was a dreamer, at least not a dreamer with an eye to the future. Never.
Really, at the ripe old age of 71 I can think of only two dreams that mattered to me. The first was family. I wanted a family. I always knew this. And second, when we moved away from the Comox Valley, for the next 44 years, I wanted to go home. Two dreams. Good things happened to me along the way but not because I had vision or dreams or goals. They just happened. And I embraced them, but I don't take credit for those riches that found me rather than the other way around.
I didn't dream about travelling the world, and yet I had the opportunity to do just that. I didn't dream of owning a beautiful home across from the ocean, and yet, here I am. I never dreamed about getting a university degree, never mind a masters degree. I worked had at those things and they happened. My high school teachers would be astounded that I became a teacher at all, never mind a counsellor, a vice principal and a principal and that I would teach Kindergarten through Grade 12 in my 25 years of teaching. I believe all of these dreams were driven by others. I was happy to go along for the ride but I would never have dreamed any of them possible, if in fact I had dreamed at all.
But, at this juncture in my life, I wish I would have had more dreams for my own sense of self. I'm not sure how dreamers are born. I mean the real dreamers, the ones with lifelong goals of 'becoming', of being a musician or an artist or a teacher or a professional athlete. I am thinking of people who felt a burning desire within themselves to 'become'. Or people who recognized their own value, their own gifts, their own sense of self.
So here I am at 71, wondering who and what I really want to be. When I look in the mirror I see a woman who just 'went along'. Many of the people I became along the way happened because of someone else's vision of who/what I could be. I never once, over all the years, sat down and thought about what I REALLY wanted. I was surprised, no shocked, when I found an artist and poet within me in my early 40's. I wish I had known her sooner. My young self would be surprised, and shocked, that my body has become a daily challenge for me. I was young and fit and athletic and competitive. I look back on that body that could do anything I asked of it and I miss it. I have always judged people who stop and look in every mirror and every store window, checking their hair, their face, their clothes, their 'presence'. I always thought them vain but as I age I wish I would have spent more time looking back at the woman in the mirror. More time asking her, "What is it you want? Who is it you want to be?"
But it is not too late. So here I am, desperately (yes desperately) wondering how to 'be', who to 'be'. And a list is emerging, While I was never a dreamer I have become a master of 'the list'. I think of lists as thought organizers, place markers, a long way from a dream, but at least a goal post to aim for.
I want my final pictures to reflect that little girl at the top of the page, to inspire those left behind to say, "Look at that old woman. Look at that smile." How's that for a 'dream'?
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