You can't get there from here...

A few weeks ago I was talking to a girl at the gym who is in her last year of high school. She had been accepted at one university but was still waiting to hear back from the program at the top of her list. Although it has been more than twenty years since I applied to university, I vividly remember the anxiety she was describing as she talked about checking her mailbox each day.

I was seventeen and it was mid-June. I was at school preparing to write one of my last exams. I had already heard back from Queen's and Ottawa U -- both had accepted me for general arts -- but I was holding out for Carleton. I had applied for the journalism program and the competition was stiff. One of my friends had gone home for lunch that day and had come back to school with a letter from Carleton offering an early acceptance to their engineering program. I called home and begged my mom to check the mail. Yes, there was a letter from Carleton. No, she was not going to open it before my exam.

Is it a big envelope or a little envelope? I asked. Is there a department on the return address? Tell me something... anything.... I begged.

I got home that afternoon and called my dad so he could hear the news along with everyone else. I got in. I screamed. I danced. I read the letter four times (later I would even frame it).

At that moment I felt that my life was set; I was going to be a journalist. My first choice was magazine writing but I would have been happy working for a major newspaper. I was going to live in Europe and marry someone fabulous. I wasn't going to have kids. I didn't like children and even if I did they take a lot of time and would interfere with my career. Yep. I had it all decided.

Twenty-some years later I look back at that girl and laugh. I did finish my journalism degree but mid-way through year one I realized that I definitely did not want to be a journalist. I have three lovely daughters and I live only minutes away from the house where I grew up. (I did marry someone fabulous, though!) I am a stay-at-home mom. I studied to be a nutritionist and a personal trainer. I teach yoga and fitness classes and I am writing a romance novel in my scarce free time.

If there was a road map for life's paths and someone plotted the life I had planned against the life I have now they would probably conclude 'you can't get there from here'. But somehow I did.

With the big four-oh only eight months away I have been doing a lot of thinking about the decisions and the circumstances that lead me to where I am now. How did a girl who hated phys ed. end up teaching Spin classes? I spent my early-twenties thinking romance novels were drivel -- today I would like to see my name on the cover of one.

Over the next few weeks I will share some of these turning points with you. Some have been significant -- meeting my husband, having a baby, quitting my job -- but some happened so gradually that I barely noticed them at the time. It wasn't a sharp right or a left but a slow merge from one road to another.

Tomorrow, I'll tell you about why I hate April.