When I was five, my (probably drunk) dad threw all my presents out into the snow in the backyard after I asked innocently if that was it, if there were any more. He obviously thought I was being a greedy little bug, but in my gut I know it was an honest question - Is the party/show over? Can I go play now? Thus my existential crisis was borne - a deep rooting of my sense that the world so often just doesn't make sense.
When I was eight, I wrote my first poem. It went something like this:
Christmas has sun, and lots of fun.
Christmas has cheer, and maybe a beer.
Christmas has snow, as everyone knows.
(and so on...)
Okay, perhaps the beverage bit wasn't it - but it feels like it was...alcoholic dad, and besides, what else rhymes with cheer? Queer? Deer? Hmmm, maybe that was it.
Anyhow, my dad was so proud of me he couldn't stop reading it to everyone, which may be why I still have it in my head. He took it to work with him and kept it on his desk for years (along with the one about Terry Fox, a "courageous man, who ran and ran and ran and ran" - we all went out to stand by the now burnt-down McDonalds to cheer him on as he passed through our town).
There's no doubt in my mind that the memory of the rare smile on my dad's face is the reason I still write. That much about my world has never failed to make sense.
We are who we are long before we have any real choice in the matter.
