This Must Be The Place
Last month I went on a trip to Prince Edward Island with one of my best friends, to celebrate my 40th birthday. I’m kind of an L.M. Montgomery superfan, and this trip was the nerdy girl adventure I’ve been dreaming of since I was like, nine. We saw the Green Gables House. We saw her birthplace and gravesite. I picked up a few of her harder-to-find backlog titles.
I saw lighthouses and red sand beaches. Balsam forests and farmland. I ate lobster for the first time! Like a real one where you have to wear a bib and crack it open. And raw oysters! I tried to eat ice cream once a day and came close; I ate a lot of potatoes and visited the Canadian Potato Museum, which was a treat by any definition of the word.
I spent a few days stepping out of my usual roles of “mom” and “wife,” a thing I haven’t done in seven years at least, when my first was born. I didn’t really write, but I thought a lot about writing. And I read for pleasure, the proof is below, because my reading recs this time are all over the place.
I’m so thankful I got to go, and I’m reminded of such a vital component of rest: feeling like yourself. A few weeks ago, Rachel wrote a wonderful post about voice, and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. It’s not that I’m disconnected from myself, exactly. Just that I tend to filter myself through the people I’m with, and of course the place. This is generally considered a good thing, to adjust to your surroundings. A skill I try to teach my kids, in fact. But getting out of the routine was part of rest, and seeing myself in another filter felt so valuable.
PEI was in L.M. Montgomery as much as Chicago is in me. It’s just a place, a place where she felt most like herself. I believe she spent most of her years in Ontario, but she wrote about PEI. And in the last thirty years, it’s somehow left a mark inside me, because I’ve returned to her books so often, and let them shape my internal life. Uncanny to visit a place for the first time and realize you already know it.
About halfway through the trip, I started picking up rocks and shells on the beach. I tried to stop myself. We were laughing about it– I told myself, the kids aren’t here. You don’t have to pick up rocks. And then when I got to the car, you know you can leave these. I brought them home. I have them in a little ceramic pot; they’re one of my favorite things I brought back from the trip. I made a token attempt to offer them to the kids, but put them away quickly, they’re mine.
Who shapes who in this world anyway? Do I pick up rocks because of my kids or do they pick up rocks because of me? I have no idea. But maybe that’s one thing about being able to feel like yourself for a little while: it turns out that you do what you do because you like it, and because you’d do that anywhere, with anyone.
That’s the version of myself that needs to make it to the page. That’s where the writing is.
Reading Recs:
Skellig by David Almond - My bookseller husband handed me this middle grade novel as a plane book and I loved it. Sweet, strange and creepy, it only took a few hours to read and felt great the whole way.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow by Washington Irving - I brought an Everyman’s Library anthology full of stories about trees, which felt like the vibes I was after on this trip. I read six or seven stories and excerpts from this book, they were all so good, and this was one of the standout selections for me. Lush but readable, with a plot that was so straightforward I kept saying, “seriously?” out loud, I actually had so much fun reading this strange classic.
The Apple Tree by Daphne Du Maurier - This was also in the anthology. Labeled a “Ghost story for Christmas,” it delivers spookiness without ever really getting spooky, much like her more famous Rebecca. This one’s a novella, so it made a quick and satisfying read.
Emily Climbs by L.M. Montgomery - This is the second book in the Emily series, and my favorite. In it, Emily attends high school and starts becoming a writer. All over the L.M. Montgomery museum we saw quotes from The Alpine Path, nonfiction that Montgomery wrote about becoming a writer. It is so similar to Emily Climbs, full paragraphs are lifted from the fiction into the nonfiction. Many people think the Emily series is her most autobiographical.
Spotify always recommends covers to me and I happen to like this cover of the Talking Heads song This Must Be The Place by Iron & Wine:
I hope that wherever you are today, you can feel like yourself, even if it’s just for a little while! <3
💛