In preschool, we always began our day in circle with a tune or two and a greeting. It really did a body good to pointedly acknowledge everyone in the room and tell them "hello, so very glad to see you." I'm not talking Romper Room memories either. I spent the past two years in preschool, exploring the world of developing language.
It seems I have two jobs: a day job and a night job. As a reader of Quitting, you know all about my night job as writer, in which dispatches from my head make their way to the Herald every Thursday. My day job (which by the way is completely, wholly, unaccountably and diametrically antithetical to smoking) is as a pediatric speech-language pathologist.
I came to pediatrics by way of adults. I was a neurodegenerative specialist (don't choke on that) at a large urban hospital in Massachusetts for years. I loved my work, my colleagues, and the opportunity to watch grace happen on a near daily basis. I traded degeneration for development when my own mother turned up with a nasty withering disease and I found I needed more hopefulness and whimsy in my daily work life.
Well let me tell you, hopefulness and whimsy is just what you get when you hang with a bunch of four year olds every day. You also get a front row seat to observe developing social skills like conflict resolution, when to tell the teacher, when to ask for help and why it's not OK to hit someone else, even if they deserve it.
It is in part because I am exposed daily to the breathtaking innate creativity of children that I began writing again. The other part is time; since my mother's passing there is no more need to meet with lawyers or nursing home administrators, no need to get medicines, seasonal clothes that fit or manage the paperwork that comes with being someone's legal representative. When she died last year, I was grateful in my head that she was not suffering any longer, but it was a stilted cerebral gratefulness that had nothing to do with my heart. I was decidedly un-grateful that my mother went like she did and that she was gone forever.
That has changed slowly over the year. Not only do I have a developing relationship with her as most-important-and-honored dead person in my life, I have the time to explore my own creativity, with the help of the little ones I know. Since I can't draw worth beans, I don't set goals like "I'm going to run a marathon" like my friend and neighbor Amy Wallace, and since I'm not very good at making stuff, that leaves writing. Massaging the written word, crafting a thought over and over until it comes out just rhythmically so can make me sigh with pleasure.
My choice of tagline, Quitting, has been like a needy dog lately, poking its nose into my side, nudging me, sending me powerful-strong silent messages. It's as if Quitting is my smoking baby and my smoking baby got extinguished along with the bathwater. Throw out smoking? Sure! And while you're at it, why not quit everything else you know about your life!
Yes, reader, I am preparing to quit my entire old life. I have decided to leave my profession as a speech pathologist for one year, during which time my job will be to establish enough of an income stream as a writer to justify going forward into a second year, and hopefully a third.
I do not naturally ascribe to the school of life idea that believes "everything happens for a reason." I am more from the drama school of "why the heck did that happen and how long can I ponder and gnash over this before the people in my life want to kill me."
New age-isms notwithstanding, there have been unmistakable signs from the universe that this is supposed to be happening for me; there is my chance New York City meeting of a person who is highly placed in a very large and recognizable international media outlet, there are the two separate offers from published writer friends to introduce me to their editors, there is the reconnection with the first editor who ever gave me an assignment back in San Francisco in 1987.
There is also the children's character and story that came to me almost fully formed during a meeting (sorry about that attention wandering).
Children's songs and old tunes are equally great for pointing the way. I like this one lately: Enjoy yourself while you're still in the pink, enjoy yourself, it's later than you think.
Suzanne is smoking not much at all, in the big picture. She remains the engine that could. Encouragements and writing assignments accepted at suzanne.danforth@gmail.com.
