JOURNEYS (A-Z April Blog Challenge)

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back….

As a little girl I used to daydream about the journeys I would take as a grown up.  We never traveled as a family and I dreamed of far off places where I was a different person.  I didn’t have anywhere specific in mind…just to be someone else, somewhere else.

Those dreams have fueled my writing a lot.  Many of my pieces have the characters either uprooted from their familiar surroundings or on a trip headed somewhere.  Often times it’s not a physical journey, but an emotional one, searching for something they’ve lost or yearn to discover.   

Throughout our marriage, we’ve taken mostly car trips.  We’ve been to Boston, Alabama, up the coast of California, Arizona, Mexico, down the East coast, Canada and around and about New York State.  I’ve gotten pages and pages of writing.  I’ve written a couple of completed pieces and there’s any number of snippets of scenery, weather conditions, landscapes and character sketches. 

Sometimes I would just tag along with Steve when he went to a conference for work.  Sitting in the lobby, I was able to people watch and imagine to my heart’s content. 

This A-Z challenge has been more of a journey than I expected.  I thought the theme of some childhood memories and how they relate to my “adult” life was going to be a fairly straight forward one.  What I’ve found instead is it’s not been as simple a road as I remembered. And like most journeys, there’s a lot going on that isn’t seen, but has a great deal of impact on the overall experience. 

There have been some really wonderful memories. And there should be – overall I had a very happy childhood with a family that loves me very much.  However, there are some not so pleasant ones that I’ve purposefully chosen not to write about.  Not writing unpleasant things goes back a long way in my writing journey and that goes for both my fiction and non-fiction pieces.  It’s been terribly difficult to remove the “happy editor” from my shoulder. You know, the one who is worried about what other people will think if you write something dark, or unpleasant.  The one who worries about hurting someone’s feelings or that makes them think “Where did THAT come from?” when they read what you’ve written.

I have to trust my travels have led me to this point for a reason.  I’d like to embark on a writing journey that is true to what I want to write.   Possibly I can dig deep and find a little Robert Frost in me, and choose the path that is “grass and wanted wear” and for myself, make the difference. 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I –

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.