Awake and Dreaming - Kit Pearson [68]
“I’ll probably live with Rae,” said Theo tightly. “She’ll probably take me back to Vancouver with her.”
“I’m sorry,” said Cecily. “Your mother has a lot of growing up to do—I could see that on the ferry.”
“I hate her!” Theo started to cry again, but more softly.
“You’re allowed to feel that. But you’ll just have to put up with her, unless you want to go to a foster home.”
“No,” shuddered Theo. “But I’ll have to leave Victoria! And the Kaldors and Sharon and Skye …”
“Theo, I wish I could stop that happening, but I can’t!”
Theo felt betrayed. “It’s not fair! Why do some people have proper families and some don’t?”
“It isn’t fair at all,” said Cecily. “But lots of things in life aren’t fair.” She sat down on the edge of her plot. “Now listen to me, Theo. I can give you some hope. I think you have it in you to survive all this. I think you’re special. You could be what I was—a writer.”
“A writer?” said Theo, astonished out of her anger.
“Yes! I’ve been thinking about this ever since our last conversation. You observe things, you make things up, you read, you’re very intelligent and sensitive. And even though you have a difficult life, that’s material!”
“Material? You mean cloth?”
Cecily threw back her head and laughed so hard that tears ran down her cheeks. “Oh, Theo, forgive me—I keep forgetting how young you are. Material is what a writer calls the—the stuff, the ingredients for a good story. Your life may have been awful and it may become awful again. But it makes a much better story than the Kaldors’ easy life. Do you understand?”
Theo’s head was spinning. “No, I don’t.”
“You will one day. But for now just keep observing the richness you have—Vancouver and Victoria, your mother and your aunt, the Kaldors … Watch it, use it. The bad times and the good times, too. If you watch carefully, there are always what I call shining moments, even in hard times—moments of sheer joy, when you’re just glad to be alive.”
“Every moment was like that when I lived with the Kaldors,” said Theo sadly.
“I’m glad I was somehow able to give you that time. It will strengthen you, remembering it.” Cecily looked intently at Theo. “There’s so much I want to tell you before—” She sighed and continued. “Here’s what I think, Theo. Writers are both awake and dreaming. They have to pay attention—to be mindful to all the small things in life, the details, whether ordinary or wonderful or terrible. Then they dream of what they can turn those details into. And if your life gets really difficult, Theo, there are two things you can do. You can force yourself to see people at a distance, like someone in a story. Then they’ll lose their power over you. Or you can make up something better and escape to it.”
“I used to do that,” said Theo.
“You can do it again. When you grow up you’ll have a treasure of stuff—of material—to shape and transform into fiction.” She sounded envious.
Theo was trying to digest her words. A writer? Her? Like Cecily? Like Arthur Ransome and E.B. White and Frances Hodgson Burnett and all the other authors she’d loved so much? A flame of excitement licked her insides.
“There’s something else, Theo,” said Cecily. She stood up. “It’s something painful, but I have to tell you. It’s time for me to move on.”
“Move on?”
“Move on to the next stage—whatever that may be. I’ve been here for long enough—forty years! If my body were still alive I’d be eighty-one. That’s long enough for anyone to hang onto life, even if it’s only been a thread of life for half of it. You need to wake up to life—I need to go to sleep for good. There’s no reason for me to linger any longer. Yes, I found the story I wanted to write. But I need to be alive to do it—to be awake. You are alive. Maybe you’ll even write down my story someday—our story.” She turned towards the sea. “I need to give it all up now.”
Theo scrambled to her feet. “You mean you have to die? No, Cecily!”
“My body is already gone,” Cecily reminded her. “It’s time for the rest of me to go.”
Theo shivered. “But aren’t you scared?”
“I gave up being scared of death forty years ago,