Starting Late--Carolyn R. Wilker

 Diane Amento Owens of Wise Women Write “considers herself a late bloomer and is proof that it’s never too late to begin writing.”  I’m so in there with her. I, too, started later in life, although there were signs along the way that it could come to pass. And yet if someone had told me in elementary school that I’d one day be writing for publication, I would not have believed it.

Writing wasn’t presented as an option at that time as were careers in teaching, nursing or secretarial work. And motherhood. From an early age I wanted to be a teacher, and a love of reading and good books has been with me, even if the number of books in our home was quite small at that time—unlike my current collection.

During my high school years, two things happened that led to me writing, apart from school assignments. Two families moved away—a friend’s family, and a family with whom we spent a lot of time. They were all friends and I missed them; I began writing letters, some of them quite long.

In high school there was much more reading material available—English novels and plays, including Shakespearean performances we got to see live. There were stories and poems that my fellow students submitted to the yearbook. Josie, a Grade 11 classmate, illustrated her story, and she allowed me to take it home one weekend so I could read the whole thing, not just snatches of it that I read over the noon hour in the cafeteria. How did she come up with such interesting ideas?

            During high school, I also began to write to a pen pal in Taiwan. Sheu Yi Yung, a graduate student in Pharmacology, sent beautiful postcards of his country and wrote about their customs and asked about ours. Already the teacher, albeit informally, I taught him English grammar, and he taught me some Chinese. Eventually I stopped writing as I had done with my Amish friend, but other connections and letters took that place.

After college, I fell in love with libraries and shared that love of books with children I taught in day care centres and nursery schools. I took my daughters to our local library or bookmobile from the time they were toddlers until well after they were able to read on their own; we read volumes. Yet it was years later, when our children were older and I was facing some health challenges, that I began to write more than letters.

At first the writing served as journalling, but with time, much reading and research, I felt compelled to write an article for our national denominational publication. That was my first publication credit and where I first learned that writing could be a risk and that others might disagree with my position. I was not dissuaded. I had a voice and I could share what I knew to be true and understood.

 A friend told me about God Uses Ink and so I attended my first writers’ conference in 2001. I knew no one else there and it was a strange and interesting step. When The Word Guild formed in 2002, I joined. The conference opened a door, and with the organization, further possibilities and meeting more new people. I experimented with my writing, trying many forms—book reviews, op-ed, children's stories, devotionals and articles—and stumbled upon poetry which I still love to write.

Numerous articles, poems, devotionals and a book later, I still enjoy writing letters, though some are harder to write—such as letters in January of this year to an Amish schoolmate that our friend was seriously ill. 

 I may be a late bloomer to writing, still in all those years I’ve collected much to write about. And now I teach writing and edit others’ work as well.

For me, writing has been a form of self-expresssion and exploration, of how I see the world and all that is in it, a world where God works in ways I do not often understand. Including times I wonder where he is.

 Is writing something that I happened on or a gift meant for me to use and share my thoughts with others? While I may not always write about God and his wonders and the way he works in others and in me, he's definitely there in my worldview—the world I see with my own eyes.

 As for being a late bloomer to writing, you're not alone as I am not alone. There's room for more. If you've pondered writing, come and explore. Come join us!

www.carolynwilker.ca

Storytelling—Carolyn R. Wilker

If someone asked me what I liked best when I was a child, it might have been hearing stories. When Mom tucked us in at night, she told us a story—such as Little Red Riding Hood or The Three Bears that she told from memory. Every week at Sunday School, the teacher read a Bible story.

When we girls were a little older, we told those stories or read to our younger siblings. When relatives gathered around the table for a meal, guess what? More stories.

During my Grade 6 year, when I was off school for several weeks on account of illness, my mother knew a good way to occupy my time. She bought three brand new books for me and I sped through them. I had nothing else to do, but read and sleep. Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell, Trixie Belden and the Red Trailer Mystery were done in a matter of days, and having new books of my own was a treasure.

My Grade 8 teacher read to us each day after lunch. I didn’t want to miss any of the adventures, whether it was Tom Sawyer or Swiss Family Robinson, two of the three books he read to us that year.

We had a library in our nearby community. One day Mom said to my sister and me that we could go to the library while she did some errands in town and that we were to be back at the car in ten minutes. I was overwhelmed at the choices and neither of us could not decide on one book in such a short time and so went back to the car without a book, which surprised my mother. We would have needed a library card and we lacked the time to do both. It was as bit disappointing and we didn’t get another opportunity. Farm life was busy; and time was at a premium.

In high school we had our own library in the school, from which I borrowed one book in my first year. I travelled to school by bus, and it was winter; the buses were cancelled because of a blizzard, and though I returned the book immediately after getting off the bus the next day, the librarian still gave me a hard time because the book was one day late. I never borrowed another book from that place.

Later, when I taught preschoolers, I borrowed books from the nearby library to augment our school’s collection and ones that I wanted to read too. That was the real beginning of my love of the library and being a regular patron.

I took my children to the library when they could only toddle across the floor or climb the steps on hands and knees. We borrowed stacks of books each time and read a story at bedtime every night and during the day.

 

Middle daughter with her book about cats to tease her into reading

My girls are grown. Our eldest is an avid reader, the youngest is studying for a new career, and the middle one reads to her two small children. And I read and tell stories to my granddaughters too.  

Today, after telling stories at the Waterloo Region Museum, to other people’s children, I stopped at the library to pick up a book that I had reserved, and then another. 

On Tuesday this week, a bag of books I have collected and read over the years, minus ones I cannot part with or need to keep, will go to a new home—the Ronald McDonald House—so that parents, having a sick child and time on their hands, might pick up a book for pleasure and enjoy it themselves or read to their child. It’s a small thing I can do to help them and share the pleasures of a good story.

www.carolynwilker.ca

Once Upon a Sandbox, Hidden Brook Press