What took you so long?

As my first novel continues on its journey of completion, my mind doesn’t just drift back to the beginning, it is pulled back.  I was a young girl with a vivid imagination, a girl who would dialogue the scenes which freely moved in my mind.  I was curious about science, space and nature.  In my need to explore, my parents bought a subscription to National Geographic, and I loved it.  My imagination soared as my younger brother and I made countless forts, explored vast worlds known and unknown, all in our own backyard.  I even imagined that I was Dr. Leaky, off to find some ancient fossil.  A purple bike with a white daisy basket was my time machine on wheels, and I was off, rarely to come home again before the streetlights came on.  I wish that my children could have this kind of carefree childhood!

 

My parents were always supportive and helpful, but I could spin a tall yarn, and with my constant dialoging, my parents weren’t sure what to do with me.  It used to bother me when my parents would tell me that this or that never happened or didn’t exist.  I knew that they were right, but yet they weren’t.  The way my imagination worked and still works, these places and people do exist.  I used to think that everyone was like me, that everyone creates stories.  My parents began seeing something in me, something creative, and so they always told me that I should be an author.  My dad always wanted me to write a story of how he and my mother met.  Their story was quite romantic, and defied odds on many emotional and personal levels.  Maybe one day I will write their story.  I say maybe, for what I have discovered through the last three years is that stories find you!  It is the characters who chase the author, beckoning, and sometimes yelling, until the author is thoroughly harassed to the submission of the pen.   Sadly, my dad is not alive to see the journey which began so long ago come to fruition, but I can tell you what he would say, if he were still alive.  “What took you so long?”