This upcoming June will mark fourteen years since I graduated high school (that loud bang you heard, yeah, that was my jaw hitting the floor!) and since I left the sleepy little Vancouver Island town I grew up in.  Like many of the graduates of Lake Cowichan Secondary, I returned for a brief stint (two of them, actually) before realizing there was something bigger that I needed to do, somewhere else I needed to be. 

I took the long way ‘round to ultimately end up exactly where I started with the very goal I set out with.  My parents were always cautious about my intention of being a writer – you know, that whole starving artist thing and all – and, offered up a handful of other possible careers (all of which were great options, just not for me) in an attempt to lure my attention away with something shiny (like, coins… and the beautiful shoes that could be purchased with coins!). 

I wavered a little… which gave way to doubt… which gave way to thinking I could write solely as an on-the-side activity.  So, I treated it as such and rarely wrote beyond silly emails and quirky stories involving close friends.  An entire decade dissolved leaving nothing more than trace memories with little to show in terms of work produced.  When I look back now, I get why that was, I understand why it sat so long simmering on the back burner – if I didn’t acknowledge it, I wouldn’t miss it as much.  If I didn’t miss it as much, I wouldn’t realize that that there was a gigantic part of me that felt lost.  And, was lost.  

I’m not exactly sure when the light came on, when I had that ‘Aha!’ moment that Oprah speaks of in nearly every episode, but somewhere along the way it happened.  Somewhere along the way I found my way back to me.  I realized that regardless of which path I followed, I was likely going to starve – either literally or figuratively.  I picked up my pen and paper (or rather, opened my laptop) and began rapidly writing (or rather, hammering away on the keys)… only to discover how different my voice is now from back then…  When exactly did that happen? 

The first full year (last year) was painful and oddly enough, I was somewhat prepared for that.  Though contracts were landed (to my surprise) and I started to establish a rhythm, I wondered if it would ever move beyond that, if I would ever establish my name.  Then, when I started to waver a little once again, a photographer friend of mine said something that I put trust in:  When you least expect it, things are going to gain speed and snowball in the best way.  Hmmm… maybe so!

Two weeks later, I had landed a freelance position on a magazine (in addition to the one I landed on another magazine two weeks prior to that) and a scheduled interview with Victoria Banks…

Yesterday was the interview… and, the timid little Lake Cowichan girl nailed it!  Next stop:  Coins… and the beautiful shoes that can be purchased with coins!

Rewinding some twenty odd years, we visit Mr. Davidson’s grade five class.  He was a smidge eccentric with his wild tufts of reddish-orange hair, tinged slightly with white, and somehow managed to keep a seemingly endless supply of various dried fruit (papaya, pineapple, ginger) in his top drawer as a reward to well-behaved students.  During our year with him, we studied, hatched and raised birds (chicken and quail) in a classroom that smelled unmistakably like a barnyard.  

Focused on the arts, he assigned us graphic collages to create and spiral-graph designs to color, each of which he would proudly laminate and frame for us.  Beyond that, we were required to write an autobiography of our truly fictional future lives. 

At ten years old, I wrote of my sprawling estate, luxury automobiles and celebrity husband (namely, Tom Selleck, who fathered our four beautiful children; two boys, two girls).  While his acting career continued to keep us in the lifestyle that we had grown accustomed to, I produced literature worthy of deep sighs, a few tears and a smiley-finish. 

The imagination of a child is a truly marvelous thing… and, sometimes, if we look hard enough, we can find truth in fiction.   It’s just too bad that Tom Selleck was already married!

There is something that has been gnawing away at the very core of my being, a teeny, tiny piece of information that will leave you reeling.  I can no longer hide behind my bulging closet of clothing and accessories, nor behind the pile of shoes that is certain to be taller than I am.  I have to confess something that may alter the way you look at me forever…

I was once entirely fashion-dysfunctional. 

Pairing reds with oranges and layering horrendous knits under a furry cow-patterned vest, I was a walking eye-sore, sure to have made small children cry.  My idea of peep-toe shoes equated to wearing my Birkenstock-like sandals without socks.  (I cringe in re-reading that last sentence)

Though able to identify the flawless faces of the classically illustrated models that blessed the glossy pages of Vogue and Glamour, my knowledge of Fashion Houses were limited to the floral fragrances in which they offered.  To me, fashion-forward meant an exciting shopping excursion to a neighboring city where, perhaps, the selection of overalls might be slightly larger than that within the boundaries of the small town in which I was raised.  I was anything but feminine, refusing to adorn my teenaged body with something that could suggest I had developed a shape beyond that of a rectangle. 

However thankful I might be that photographs of this sad, ill-dressed girl haven’t yet surfaced on Facebook, I sometimes wonder how she got from there to here. 

Here… a place where walking by Coach and Jimmy Choo have left me breathless… a place where little black dresses no longer frighten me into wild hysteria, a place where I am the proud owner of the most stunning pair of pearly white Chanel stilettos that ever were.  I am reformed.

Man meets woman.  Man and woman fall in love.  Man and woman live happily ever after.  Since the dawn of time, this very premise has been the seemingly endless merry-go-round we have all be spinning around on.  As children we gather together, hoping and praying that Cinderella’s glass slipper will be returned to its rightful owner.  As adolescents we hold our breath in reading the final scenes from Romeo and Juliet.  As adults… Well, we tend to be a little jaded.

By the time our mid-twenties roll around we have already come to the unfortunate discovery that the things we grew up believing are, in fact, quite different in reality.   We begin to realize that the premise of man-meets-woman is, actually, far more complicated than one would have thought.  It isn’t as easy as 1+1=2.  The mathematics of love and romance don’t often make sense and sometimes we end up losing more than we gained.  We gamble in love, the stakes are raised, and each time the heart is put on the table, we risk the other person folding.  Even though the threat of a heart-breaking-gut-wrenching-cry-your-eyes-out kind of breakup will always linger in the backdrop, this, to me, seems like a better alternative than to live a lifetime alone, to awake each morning in a bed that is still half-perfectly made.  Life seems somewhat meaningless unless snide comments can be made about the toilet seat being left in the upright position!

The images we were plagued with as youngsters have left us very confused as adults (not to mention, borderline hyperglycemic).  In all of my thirty years, I have not yet been rescued by a gallant man, who is not only beautiful and riding, but of course, a white stallion, but who has also befriended a colony of woodland creatures.  Instead, I have seen various sized men who drive import cars and have buddies who talk sprockets, gears and games.

While I may never wear a glass slipper upon my foot, I know I will be alright.  Besides, glass is so 16th century!

Walking the ice-covered streets this frigid morning, afraid a single misstep would result in a Chaplin-esque tumble to the pavement, it occurred to me – we are only in our first month of winter.  And, try as I might to be the eternal optimist, I fear, come February 2nd, the famous furry rodent will deliver grim news: six more weeks before warmer days are on the horizon.

I now understand the whole fly-south-for-the-winter-thing, I would make the trek too if I were a bird.  Just think of it, free round-trip airfare without the concern of a canceled flight or loss of luggage – brilliant, I say!

Without a pair of wings of my own to whisk me away to a sandy-beached-blue-skied destination, I find myself searching continuously for a warm place to escape to, somewhere to defrost and melt away the cynicism that the minus temperatures have brought on.

Weighing the pros and cons of waiting out the winter in misery or making my way to a tropical locale, I have come to the conclusion that while I would gladly trade snowmen for sandcastles, mugs of hot chocolate for slushy beverages in hollowed-out coconuts, frozen pine trees for towering palms, there is one great thing about winter:  it’s not swimsuit season!

Resolution often means re-invention – of one’s internal or external self.  Perhaps even both.  We wait 365 days to decide to take it upon ourselves to do better, to be better.  The arrival of January 1st causes a stir within each of us, we gather in groups with funky hats and obnoxious noise-makers to bid farewell to the passing year and to welcome the birth of a new calendar, but more than that, we are stepping into a hopeful future where we can showcase our new selves — the happier, healthier person we are each wanting to become.

I have often found resolutions to have the life expectancy of an already-bruised banana.  You know it’s only a matter of days before the whole thing is turning into a mushy mess, saturated with pesky fruit-flies.  But, that same girl with that sordid mental image of what it means to make a resolution went and made one this year – half in jest, half in… OK, all in jest, really.  What did I resolve?  To give up something near and dear to me: bacon!

I am quite certain my arteries are already planning a huge celebration (complete with an enthusiastic parade of pumping blood)  at my mere mention of no longer having to process the nutrition-deficient deliciousness that this pork-product is.  And, while a part of me has come to terms with the bacon-free Melissa, my taste buds will never.

So long, dear friend… you will be missed.