The Writing-It-Down Stage

Trekking on Banks Island, N.W.T.

Introspection seems to come with age.

I’m there right now. In the writing-it-down, keeping-a-record, telling-the-story-stage. Is it just that I don’t want my history lost, my life undocumented? Or do I feel the world needs my words, my spin, my story?

I’m unearthing journals, diaries and letters written home in boxes and filing cabinet drawers and rearranging them into a chronological electronic record. And yes, I kept everything. My mother, my husband’s mother and my sister-in-law hoarded all our letters written home from the early years in the Arctic.

My newly married self, my first days in a different culture, my attempts to understand and describe my life are being cracked open.

I see a young woman arriving in the Arctic fresh from the hectic life of a university student, and several part-time jobs, wheels spinning, moving fast. Forced to slow down by the natural pace of isolated village life, I often chafed and sometimes mourned.

Accustomed to friends nearby that I could rehearse my thoughts, reactions and days with, I was desperately lonely. No distractions, such as television, or library books, shopping malls or telephone calls. Just life.

I see a 21-year old who looked at her husband with no blinders on and asked, “What am I doing in this place with this man?” The answer to that question is in my journals. I did find a purpose, and a deep friendship with “that man” that has enriched our nearly 48 years of marriage.

What do I hope to find by looking back? I’ll never know unless I do it.

copyright 2011