who are you & how did you get here

What a question. I might be over thinking this one, but I’m pretty sure that’s a story that will take a lot longer than the quick ten minutes I'm allotted.

I joined a group who are keen to ‘invest in self’ in a time of financial restraint – it's kick started by the organization I work for, but includes community partners. I’m ditching my preconceptions as I uncover them. They hide, especially when challenged.

We met first in November, and it was all honeymoon and glow. People were hesitant but excited to be there. A first date is like that: a bit clumsy and usually seen through a heady hue of beautiful colours because it’s all fresh and new. We can’t see any other tracks in the snow but ours.

Now that we’re on the second date the ante has officially been upped. It’s time to look more closely at the veneer, if not yet beneath it – both ours and those around the table with us. Each participant is asked to bring a story to share. Initially, the request seemed innocuous enough – tell us who you are through sharing a little about how you got here.

Yikes.

Which ‘here’ should I choose? There are a few. Meeting my partner was a significant fork in the road of how I got here. Actually, it was getting lost on Lexington Avenue that derailed my train. But there are forks farther back along the route than that.

Dad lost the keys to our car while we camped in a farmer’s field outside of Renfrew, Ontario. Grandpa and grandma stayed with us one winter when I was four, and they spoke little english. My family was trapped for days on a boat stuck in a hydro-electric lift lock – I think in the summer of '79 – when a lightning storm knocked out power (and it wasn't as glamorous as it might sound). I caught a ride to Mexico with a total stranger one winter and drove from Ontario to Mexico in a 3-cylinder Pontiac Firefly.

My point isn’t that some strange things have happened to me – or that I’ve done some strange things. What’s being revealed to me through this simple question is that how I got here is not just by my own actions. It's through a culmination of things: a series of events, time spent with people I love (or not) and unusual situations I put or found myself in.

I’m looking forward to listening to how others interpret this question, and what they choose to share with us. But I’m also interested to see what part of my story I’ll share with these sixteen people that I barely know. It’s storytelling, and it’s what I love.

Oh, and the move to Mexico was to start a life with a fella who isn’t the man I’m now in love with. Plus I didn’t get a job in Toronto that I had wanted desperately. Oh, but that’s a good story...


~ Jeannette