Foreward
My life-long dream has been to write a book and see it published. I can almost smell the new-book scent on its crisp pages, feel the solid binding and smooth cover, and revel in the sight of my name on the cover, my words printed on its pages. Beneath my calm exterior is this scene from “That Thing You Do,” a movie I love because it reminds me of what I’ll feel like doing when my dream of writing and publishing a book comes true!
Thank you all for your support of my dream and for encouraging me to keep working at it. When the time comes for me to jump up and down, scream at the top of my lungs and run through the streets waving my book over my head, I want you there with me! We’ll celebrate with a chicken barbeque, brownie hot fudge sundaes, and groovy 70s music!
Why Water is my Spirit Element
There is a lot I want to write about water, but only a small puddle of it will fit into my book. That’s why I require your indulgence! Let me get all my words on this topic out of my soul and into this blog post. Then I will be free to continue writing my book. Thank you in advance. You are unblocking writer’s block, a nearly impossible task! Go you!
I LOVE WATER!
It has slowly dawned on me that I am naturally drawn to living water. By “living water” I mean fresh water that dances, sings, and teems with life. It speaks with the voice of a little girl laughing, playing, and free.
I love listening to water lap against a shore or gurgle and churn as it tumbles through a river bed. I enjoy wading in it, swimming in it, boating on it, running my fingers through it, and watching it live its life.
My love for water began at my grandparent’s summer home on Schroon Lake in New York’s Adirondack Park, a two-hour drive from the house in Troy, NY where I grew up. The first pictures of me at the lake were taken when I was two years old waddling across the beach in my diaper followed by my pet ducks. From that time until my grandparents’ lakefront property was sold in the mid-1990s, our family spent time there every summer.
Looking back on those idyllic summers, I remember it as a magical place where the sun shone all the time and I could play in the water all day. Nothing seemed to stand in the way of unending fun. I was aware of my mother and grandmother watching from the screened in porch. But I had a sense that I could do anything I wanted. There was no one to stop me. The camp and the lake were mine!
My sister Lois and I loved taking our family’s Sunfish sailboat out. We would race against the wind toward the opposite shore, letting the edge of the boat tip up until the sail almost touched the water. Then we’d let the sail out just in time to keep the whole thing from flipping over. If the sun made us hot, we’d let the boat flip and send us splashing into the cool water. After a few minutes, we’d flip the boat upright and sail off again.
We take it camping with us as often as we can.
A tenth of a mile down the shore from my grandparents’ place was a large rock shelf that jutted out into the water. My three sisters and I loved to climb in Grandpa’s rowboat and paddle down there with a bucket of old dishes and a few odd things we’d found. We spent many happy hours pretending we were stranded and had to do what we could to survive like the Boxcar Children we’d read about.
As a teenager, one of my first summer jobs was working as a short-order cook at a pizza restaurant a mile down the lake from Grandma and Grandpa’s camp. My older sister, Tami, and I lived at camp the entire summer. Neither of us were experienced enough to drive a car. Instead, Grandpa rigged the rowboat with a small outboard motor so we could get back and forth to work that way. It wasn’t much fun motoring down the lake in the dark after our shift was over. But, we thought it was pretty cool that we got to drive a boat to work.
That’s all for now. Thank you for reading these precious memories that help illustrate why water is my super element. In addition to including a few of these memories in my current book, I plan to use them as inspiration for fictional children’s stories in the future. They’ll be written under the pen name Jeanie Butterfield, which was the name my family called me when I was a little girl.
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