I met up with two friends at a local brewery last week. I joined the spontaneous gathering wearing sweats and a sweatshirt — evidence that this was an unusual way for me to break the monotony of a week splitting at the seams. I ordered my favorite beverage from their drink menu: bourbon peach iced tea. The spring sun was dipping into the lower half of the sky and the cool air settled on the patio when the waiter brought out the tumbler with a lemon wedge over the rim. My friend took a sip of hers before I did. “AH. It’s SO good. Even better than I remember it.” she remarked. I sipped mine. The smokey sweetness of bourbon melded with the tart floral peach. She was right; it was absolutely better than I remembered it. Long after the ice had melted in the bottom of our glasses we headed our separate ways.

I drove home through the rolling chlorophyl-saturated fields of the Palouse. The sun had set but its glow still illuminated the western horizon. All the components for a wandering mind were there: resonant flavors, a dusky spring sky, a quiet car on a lonely highway, contentment. I heaved a sigh and skipped like a smooth stone from one thought to the next. The distinct flavors of the bourbon peach ice tea sent me hurdling back in time to the day I admitted to myself I wanted to be a writer. I don’t so much have a specific date on the calendar, but a season with sharp demarcations and landmarks.

I took an essay writing class the spring of my sophomore year. I misunderstood what the modern essay was. I genuinely believed it would help me sharpen my academic essay writing. I had no idea of the other more pleasant creative form. My final piece for the class was total garbage. I had trotted out the sensational events from my childhood and had run out of anything noteworthy before the last assignment. In the final paper I rambled about nothing and made it spiritual. I got a C on it, a merciful gesture from my professor.

I was a track III English major, a subcategory English degree designed to pair with a teaching certificate. My mother had been explicit in my childhood, “Don’t be an artist, Jiorgia. Or you’ll starve.” My mother was an artist and later a poet and her financial insecurity was damning evidence of that invective. I did not entertain even the slightest notion of writing as a career. I was too afraid to starve and too afraid of failing as I had already.

I eventually became a teacher of secondary English and Language Arts. I taught writing and the act of guiding preteens through the process gave me a keen sense of how satisfying good writing feels exiting the body through your fingertips. Not once during my early teaching career did I fancy BECOMING a writer though. Many years into teaching I whispered “It would have been fun to be an essayist or syndicated columnist.” I felt locked in as a teacher and I didn’t realize I could do anything else.

Both whispered dreams and a teaching career were relegated to trunk space when we started a family and moved to rural Alaska. I tried to blog and wrote sparsely about our experience. I was a terrible blogger only for lack of consistency. There was direct correlation between more children and fewer typed words and I quit blogging altogether. The next time I really wrote for a broader audience was for my daughter’s Caring Bridge during her Leukemia treatment. I could process the senseless power of cancer over our lives. I coped through language.

That same professor of essay writing — to whom I had submitted the most vile and revolting work masquerading as an essay — came to my house when Addy was sick with a container of immune-boosting soup. Over tea in my back yard, she casually and matter-of-factly spoke of a time when this would all find its way into a book. Other people in my life, far less literary, also determined that is what I should be doing — distilling the monumental events of my life into a memoir. I was still unconvinced.

On the precipice of turning 40 in the middle of a global pandemic I endeavored to replicate that glorious bourbon drink from the local brewery with Kirkland Signature scotch and Snapple peach iced tea. I sipped the rough approximation as I planted spring bulbs. I got quite dirty and a little drunk in my flower beds.

I quietly meandered inside to wash the sun and soil off. Sitting in the bottom of the shower in a boozy fog I admitted to myself I wanted to write for real. It would take months before I could muster up the courage to explore what the hell this could look like. I took a class about the practical maneuvers to pitch myself off this creative cliff. For months I wrote about anything that came to mind– my family of origin, parenting my own kids, moving to rural Alaska, having a child diagnosed with cancer, my mother’s accident, her quadriplegia, faith — all of it in little vignettes that remarkably resemble a creative essay.

In all ways, I am a late bloomer. I was not the child in the window seat writing little stories for my family. In fact, I never thought I could do this, believing I should have known myself better decades ago. In that conversation I had with myself in the shower, I shot down all the obstacles and doubts. It’s not too late. You’re not too old. Yes, it will take time. Everyone feels like an imposter. It doesn’t negate the investment you made as a teacher. It’s okay. You can do this.