New Year's List

2007 was an exciting year, and I'm looking forward to 2008. At the age of 57 I feel a whole new phase of life beginning - my three children, Anna, Sam and book, are out in the world, teaching is going well, and I'm now contemplating the next projects. There's an article in the weekend paper about baby boomers making lists of what they want to do before they die. My list is simple: I want to publish more books, do more travelling, and spend more time in the country and/or by the sea.

I'd also, at some point in the future, like to fall in love again, join a choir, downsize to a smaller, possibly communal dwelling, and find more time for reading. Actually, I'd like to clone myself so that one of me does nothing but read - newspapers, websites, the "New Yorker" plus "Geist", "Maisonneuve," "Brick," "Walrus" and other great Canadian mags. And of course stacks and stacks of books. While that Beth sits happily reading, the other Beth is writing, teaching and living her life unimpeded by guilt about not finding time to read. Sigh.

"True to life," my Ryerson course, starts tonight and there's still room. "Autobiography II" at U of T starts in two weeks, and my new class there, "Tell the Family Story", will launch next term. As for writing, I have finally pulled out the boxes filled with diaries and letters from the Sixties, and am immersed in rediscovering myself at age 14 and 15. Delving so deeply into the past is the gift, and the grief, of a lifelong diarist. I read my daughter a few pages, and she said, "My God, Mum, you were intense at 14!" I want to say to that 14-year old girl, just relax, it'll get better.

Because it does and it did. It sure did.

Happy New Year.