My parents moved into their dream home in the fall of 1938. They celebrated my eighth birthday the following February. Canada entered the war (WWII) in the fall of 1939. By1940 my father was in uniform. He was a doctor and head of a Casualty Clearing Station - CCS - more easily recognized and understood by the name of its U.S.counterpart, MASH, because of the TV show, set in the Korean war. I won’t go into more detail now because I was just setting the scene, not digging into early emotional problems. What I want to tell you about here is my next-door neighbour. She was just one month older than I although I was ahead of her in school, grades, that is. I had my appendix out the fall of 1939; my neighbour fell from the second floor of a house being built on the next street - to the basement - and walked home, very bruised. We recuperated together before we went back to school.

You’d think with that proximity of age and geography that we would be the very best of friends, but it didn’t happen. Ever. She was slim and fashionable and made all the right moves. I was a nerd, a smart nerd. The gap widened. My father was posted overseas while her father stayed home and made money. My mother took in boarders to meet the mortgage payments and her mother hoarded pineapple juice. My neighbour went off to a private school for her high school years and I went to a public school and met different people. I started university ahead of her, and kept on going and going, through a double honours French and English B.A.degree, a Masters degree in English - and got married and had children. She started in some course or other and dropped out - and got married and had children. We did that in those days.

This is about the election in the United States, in case you hadn’t guessed. I am watching the results now, the end not yet established, and I’ve been thinking about my continental neighbours. I don’t dislike them. Some of my best friends are Americans, family too. I like them. I’m not envious, exactly, but they make me feel like a nerd, a familiar feeling from way back. Don’t think I’m unique among Canadians in this feeling. Mine is compounded. I mean how would you like to be, not only Canadian but also Manitoban, smart and female?? OH, I forgot to say old. Smart, female and old. Not a winning combination.

Well, we all have crosses to bear.

What's going to happen next?

I taught Sunday School for years, working my way up through the ages as my children grew along. Finally, I got to sing in choir and stayed in church for the sermon. Later, in Toronto, in my next life, I taught at different times a range of school children of all ages, guiding them to an understanding of puppets as more than crafty creations, or helping them to the creation of a play of their own. This play project happened twice when I was granted 14 half-days (when the prescribed time was up, I threw away the calendar, and any hope of further income, in order to see it through). It involved seeing a class once or twice a week through to a production, which the creators performed in, the one for their peers in a school production, the other for an audience of parents and family at an end-of-year celebration This latter play was actually published and has been performed by other classes in other schools . I wonder if I can find it…

This is from the Playwrights Press catalogue:

Audience Age: Theatre for Young Audiences

Synopsis: Aliens have mistakenly sent a "Discovery Capsule" to Earth and are determined to retrieve it, but before they can, it is found by children on their way to school.

Playwright: Betty Jane Wylie

Play Information Format: Copyscript Year Printed: 1993

First Produced: First produced in 1981 at Kohai School, Toronto, ON. Publisher: PGC Running TIme: 30 minutes

That’s amazing, haven’t thought of it in years.

We started with what I called a “pudding play” or story. I used to do this with my own kids but I had only four to deal with It’s different and harder to sit in the middle of a group of 12 to 16 or more children, each one taking a turn to give you an “ingredient” to stir into a story you are telling , improvising on the spot as required. Later it was their turn. I won’t go into that now. I brought it up because of the nature of trust involved tin these exercises.

It is a rare privilege to be privy to the inner workings of another human being’s mind, child or adult. And I am enjoying that privilege now. i’m conducting a teaching/writing workshop with half a dozen writers as we/they develop ideas and images into some semblance of a play or a dramatic structure. Of course it isn’t easy but it is so much fun, and offers unsuspected revelations.

revelation |rɛvəˈleɪʃ(ə)n| noun 1 a surprising and previously unknown fact that has been disclosed to others: revelations about his personal life.

ORIGIN Middle English (in the theological sense): from Old French, or from late Latin revelatio(n-), from revelare ‘lay bare’ (see reveal1). Sense 1 dates from the mid 19th cent. [Online Dictionary]

i seem to be living in a world of constant wonders. I am so blessed.