Miss Potter

The strangest thing happened to me tonight. I had a movie-induced moment. I won't call it an epiphany, but it felt like something quite close to one.

I've always been a girl who loved magic. I don't mean hocus pocus or scary people in robes in the woods, I mean the magic that happens every day. I was blessed with an unusual childhood and unusual parents in a place where it was easy to believe in magic. I was also blessed with a Grandfather who made me believe in leprechauns. While I loved the Anne of Green Gables books, it was Emily of New Moon that enchanted me. I wanted to believe in faeries in the woods.

When I was old enough to decide that I wanted to be a writer I began looking for people to whom I could relate. When you are a teenager and female and you love writing there is a core reading list. I was drawn to Virginia Woolf and Sylvia Plath but I had real trouble reading them. They were both profound and incredible but I found that I could not relate to them. Bad things had happened to me but I had not embraced the darkness as they seemed to. I stumbled around a little. I could not be a writer. I lacked the angst and the issues that a Real Writer must stumble against. I did not recognize myself anywhere.

So that brings me back to tonight. Mark and his Dad were away tonight so his Mom and I decided to watch a girl-movie. I rented "Miss Potter" and I was just expecting a nice movie. I didn't know anything about her and I don't really remember reading her books when I was a kid. I was completely enchanted. I recognized her. She was an ordinary women who did not want to live an ordinary life. She saw magic in the world around her and enjoyed it. She was creative and a strange extrovert/introvert mix. Bad things happened to her but she recovered. She never lost that sense of magic and possibility.

So I am sitting here at midnight feeling lighter than I have in ages. Until tonight I hadn't realized how I felt about being a Writer. I didn't know that I couldn't see myself as a writer because I hadn't anyone to compare myself to. I didn't know that I didn't want to be a writer if it meant darkness and angst. I was given a gift tonight in an unlikely package. I was given a bit of insight and I was given a heroine. I am deeply grateful.