Thoughts on Reality

I have been doing a lot of thinking the past year about reality versus dreams. Here’s the problem, the best I can deduce it: if a person just submits to the harsh facts of reality, she does not try to re-create that reality. And yet, if she is always looking at her dreams, she is naïve. When I consider the reality of what I want to accomplish with my writing career, it is rather a dismal picture. Writers need platform and influence these days; publishers want important names. At this point in my 27 years, I have neither. I just have a passionate heart and a devotion to the craft. I also have gumption, says my friend Letha.

When I was 14, I remember my best friend Debbie and I deciding we wanted to live on Lopez Island for part of our summer break. We had fallen in love with this little gem of an island just off the coast of Washington. It is small and quaint and the friendliest island in the San Juans. After having taken a short weekend camping trip there with my mother, we were smitten with its charm: Everyone who passes you on the road waves, even if they just lift two fingers off the steering wheel. I noticed a cat bite actually made the news in the crime section of the Lopez newspaper. The dandelions that line the island roads have the look of dainty wildflowers. The island “dump” has all the hand me down books, furniture, clothes, and old appliances stacked and ordered and available to anyone in need. The bakery is the gathering place in the tiny village and home to the most amazing, fresh baked goods you will find.

After my first trip to Lopez one summer, I was determined to return and stay longer. So as 8th graders, Debbie and I went downtown to the Spokane library and asked the lady at the reference desk for the phone book to the San Juan Islands, which is a book the thickness of my thumb. We proceeded to look up the names of all the businesses on Lopez (I think there were 40) and sent letters in the mail offering our services in exchange for room and board. We eventually heard back from the lady who owns the Lopez Bakery. She did not want us to work; she wanted us to come and play and delight in the island. Which is exactly what we did. The summer before I started high school, my mother drove Debbie and I the 7 hours across the state and then we all took a ferry to the island. After meeting Holly B. (our hostess), my mom confirmed we had indeed found a kindred spirit. My mom left the next day, feeling good about my adventures.

Debbie and I had our own little cabin on Holly’s property. We dug potatoes in the garden, enjoyed her outdoor solar powered shower, ate strawberry scones and cinnamon rolls, rode bikes around the island, made friends with her 3 sons, and learned the pace of island life. It was a dream–the re-creation of reality. We infused reality with our desires and were able to live what we had imagined. And yet, we needed others to help us create it. We needed our mothers to believe in our adventures and we needed Holly’s exuberant hospitality to two strange girls.

I have been thinking that any one person’s dream requires many midwives. I am happy to carry my writing dream, nurture it, and let it gestate. I am grateful for the many people in my life who have offered love and grace to my journey– who have, if even for moments– been midwives to the life inside of me. But I am aware that reality is very stubborn. So, today, I find myself telling reality that I am more patient, more creative, and more persistent than it. I want to discover many “Lopez Islands” in my life– those places where reality gets to participate in my dreams.