drawing to a close

Today is the last day of the SIWC.  I have one more panel to be on, and then I go home to my boys.  I am so ready.  I’m used to having enormous chunks of solitude, alone time, and am feeling a little emptied out from so much interaction.  A woman I met in Calgary, while I was still fully me, told me about a Jewish term that she felt applied.  “Wide,” she’d said.  And I knew what she meant.  I do feel, in most of my life, full, wide, grateful of all the blessings, am able to sit and hear what my heart and belly tell me are true.  But I don’t feel wide now.  It like everything is tucked up inside me as far as it can go.  It’s not a sadness or anything, it’s just a been-public-for-too-many-days and I need to go home sort of feeling.  I long for my normal day-to-day. 

Tomorrow I go to Toronto.  I’m tired, but the thing about Toronto is I am going to be reading in the libraries and I am really quite excited about that.  When I was a girl, every weekend, we’d take the ferry over to the main land to get our groceries, then we’d swing by Buckerfield to get the chicken feed, and the grain for the cow, and finally when all the chores were done...we’d go to the library!  We would always check out the maximum books allowed and when we’d go home, we’d read all our chosen books and then swap and read all our brothers and sisters books as well.  And the books that we read.  The places we travel.  The things that we experienced through the books that we borrowed, really helped shape me and my vision of the world.  So, although there is a part of me, that longs for home, there is another part, the little girl inside that is dancing around, because these next few events I will be talking and reaching and sharing myself, my stories, my writing with children who are bused in.  Children who, like me, use the libraries to grow and stretch and understand the world beyond the walls of their own lives and homes and that is a wonderful thing. 

Ahh… writing about it just now, has lifted my heart already.

Posted by Meg Tilly on Sunday, October 21, 2007 in Chewing the Fat

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