Amazing things often begin as tiny moments.
One of those moments happened last July, while sitting at a picnic table in Stratford, Ontario, basking in the morning sunshine. My oldest and dearest friend Sonia and I had gone there — an annual pilgrimage that Sonia made for 30 years with her mother, who died last year. I am there to try to fill that space, to help cherish the memory and continue the tradition, but also to get a first glimpse at the seat in the Avon theatre that Sonia has endowed to her mother’s memory. A little gold plaque that says, “For Doris, music I heard with you was more than music, your loving daughter.” There will be tears when we see that — tears of grief but also tears of joy or gratitude somehow — but that is later. For now, we’re at a picnic table in front of city hall, with notebooks and coffee, people watching and getting lost in our thoughts.
Behind us, a school group has arrived — late high schoolers, maybe young college kids. Their teacher is with them and it’s impossible not to eavesdrop a bit. We discover that they’re seeing the same plays we are but are also going to stick around to watch the sets being struck in between shows. They are discussing stagecraft and Shakespeare and this teacher loves what he does, it’s clear in the way he draws the kids out and listens to their opinions. His passion for the subject shines from him and, not for the first time since I retired, I realize that I really miss teaching.
I am just about to open my mouth to say this to Sonia — that I miss teaching — when she fixes me with an intense look. “Do you miss teaching?” she says.
It doesn’t surprise me that she’s read my mind. We’ve known each other for thirty five years or so and in that time, we have both noticed that we are sometimes like two halves of the same brain. She’s my sister from another mister and we’ve gotten each other through a lot over the years.
“I do miss teaching,” I say. “I miss the kids. I miss the creativity of it.”
She ponders this because she is also at a professional crossroads. Twenty five years of practicing corporate law, and now five years of “semi-retirement” which she defines as part-time in-house counsel for an investment bank along with directorships on multiple charitable boards. She’s been thinking she needs a change — she’s been thinking of leaving the in-house counsel job but is worried that it will be like stepping off a cliff. What will her purpose be now?
Luckily, she has finally read the copy of The Artist’s Way that I gave her for Christmas a few years ago and she has discovered that she loves to paint. It is exploding out of her actually and I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her as excited and happy as when she’s engaging in this long suppressed passion. It’s inspiring to witness and it’s made me think a lot about what I feel passionate about.
“You know what I’ve always wanted to do, though?” I say. “I’ve always wanted to teach writing. Like, to adults. People who want to write a memoir or a novel.”
And there it is. The tiny moment. I swear the sounds of the world around us fell away for a few seconds and we looked at each other in excited silence for a short eternity.
“What if we did that?” she says. “What if we made that a business?”
By the time we’d seen the matinée of King Lear, we had a hundred ideas about courses, retreats and destination events. A stroll back through Art in the Park along the river and we realized that someday we could include visual art courses. At supper, she started writing the business plan and by the time we’d seen Rent that night, Pencil & Prose was born.
All from that tiny moment at the picnic table in the July sunshine in front of Stratford city hall. All from speaking my greatest wish to the universe.
Amazing things are going to happen over at Pencil & Prose.
We hope you’ll come along for the ride.
P.
P.S. The code BLANKETFORT25 (all caps, all one word) will get you 25% off our first course.
Lovely stuff! Bonne chance!