readings, Red Deer and Robert Kroetsch

Saturday, May 28th.

I’m at the Mayfield Inn & Suites in Edmonton, having just delivered a breakfast keynote for the Alberta Association of Library Technicians (AALT). An engagement arranged by Susan Toy, a friend from Humber who has never failed to live up to a long ago promise that, if my book was ever published, she’d do everything she could to help get air under its wings.

As the girl who used to sit on the floor among the fiction stacks of every library and bookstore I ever visited, gazing at the H-authored shelves, trying to believe enough work could earn me a place among them, giving a keynote to a roomful of library techs is more than a little surreal. Copies of Mennonites Don’t Dance are now on their way to new libraries, including a high school and middle school.

In a very little while, the winner and runners up of the Danuta Gleed Literary Award will be announced in Toronto. I’m in the running, along with Teri Vlassopolous, another friend from Humber.

Several hours later, Susan and I are headed out of Edmonton. She’s on her way home, and my sister lives along the way.

Although rewarding, it’s been a long weekend. I don’t travel well, and feel ready for the glue stick factory. My post-reading migraine is crackling on the horizon. But Susan has arranged a surprise that will make all that disappear for a little while.

For the moment, though, I still don’t know that anything but a bathroom break is on our itinerary.

The last time I stopped in Red Deer, it was 18 years ago and I had my wedding dress in the back seat of my mother’s Ark-sized Oldsmobile.

This time, I’m with Susan as she wends her Subaru into a residential neighbourhood. New developments surround us with show homes, and I begin to worry that:

1) We’re lost, and

2) I didn’t, ten minutes ago, make myself clear.

“If I pretend I’m interested in that townhouse there, the realtor might let me use the bathroom!”

“Yes, yes,” says Susan. “You’ll be fine for another minute. I’m taking you to meet someone.”

What?! Nooooo!

Glue sticks. Migraine. Bathroom! I want to say. But Susan knows I’m knackered. I know she knows I’m knackered. She wouldn’t take me on a detour unless it was going to shake my boughs.

Turning into the driveway of an elegant condominium building, Susan says, “There he is.”

On a bench, taking in a blue Alberta afternoon, is Robert Kroetsch.

I’m not well traveled enough, connected or schooled enough, to recognize him by sight alone. An ignorance that makes me instantly nervous when Susan tells me who we’ve come to visit. I’m glad I didn’t know ahead of time, because I would’ve spent it worrying. After all, I’m still clutching my very first book, and this man is a legend.

More, I know that fellow Thistledown author, Anne Sorbie, lately loaned him a copy of my stories.

“He’ll give you an honest opinion,” she said.

Honest opinions didn’t scare me until the book was printed and bound. Until then, anything or everything could still be fixed.

Now, even though the reviews have been generous enough to leave me slack-jawed, and Mennonites Don’t Dance has landed on two shortlists, I don’t know what to expect. Just that I keep expecting a reversal of fortunes.

What I do know is that this gentleman, who is gracious and kind as he takes my hand and shakes it warmly, is someone who has a right to his opinion.

“I wish I’d thought to take the two of you out to dinner,” he says. And just like that, he puts me at ease.

How do I tell him, or Susan, that this next half hour is already 30 minutes I will never, not ever, forget? Do I even know this yet?

We spend the time talking about books and writers. I tell him who taught me. His eyes light up as he says that he taught my teachers. Then he says, “I’ve read your stories and they’re extraordinary.”

After so many years of doubt, my heart is on my sleeve, along with these stories.

“How do you go into all those dark places?” he asks. And because I don’t think about being smart or clever, because Robert Kroetsch is so easy to talk to, I say, “With a lamp.”

He nods and agrees. There’s no finding one’s way without one.

As the minutes tick and it’s time to get back on the road, I already know that if my name isn’t called in Toronto tonight, I’ve been given something priceless.

Half an hour later, though the three of us hoped the announcement would come in while Susan and I were still in Red Deer, we’re driving again when I find out that I’m a runner up.

After I call my husband, I send an email to Robert Kroetsch.

It’s wonderful news, he says. He’s glad to have met me on this special day. There’s more to the email, but repeating his words would lighten their weight.

Runner up may be the bridesmaid’s prize. And to everyone who doesn’t write, the dollar difference between first place and not looks like a loss.

I would love to have won. I would love to have been in Toronto to hear my name called.

Who could pretend otherwise? Although I can’t even describe what a thing it is to be shortlisted for such an award!

As Susan and I drive towards Calgary, the crackle begins to return and I’m anxious to see my sister.

Today has been a gift, and I look forward to a few days from now, when I’m home and can peel back the tape and untie the ribbons.

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