Message in a Bottle – The story behind the stories

Did you find one of the messages in a bottle left by Pat?

by

There have been eight short stories published in this series. If you’ve been reading along, did you ever wonder if there really was someone leaving messages in little bottles around Oakville? Were the stories true?

I confess it was me who left the messages in the bottles. Let me tell you why.

It all started when my husband passed away in January 2019 after a two-year battle with cancer. I carried my burden of grief with a toxic mix of sorrow and bone-cracking emptiness. Alone for the first time in my seventy plus years on this planet, I had no idea what to do next.

In the days that followed, I developed temporary amnesia, overwhelming nausea and such a profound sense of loss; I didn’t know how to go on. I wondered how I could learn to live with the screaming silence in the home we’d shared; his recliner sitting there next to mine, empty and waiting. I was desperate to find a way to bring a spark of life back into my days.

Some months later, I visited a friend of mine in Cobourg who was battling multiple myeloma. She brought me into her art room and showed me the beautiful little rocks she was painting in various designs and colours. She would secretly leave them in locations around the town – simply to brighten someone’s day. It brought her joy, she said. 

I fell in love with this idea, which was before painted rocks became a global pastime during the pandemic. I began to think of ways I could so something similar, but as a writer, I wanted to use the power of words instead of paint.

I have always turned to inspirational books to get me through hard times. The beautiful writings of people like Richard Wagamese, Pema Chödrön and Eleanor Roosevelt never fail to give me a degree of peace and insight. As a children’s author, even the wacky words of Dr. Seuss can put a smile on my face. 

With this in mind and a bit of imagination, my “messages in a bottle” project was born. I would roll up little messages to put in my bottles and secretly leave them for people to find - like my friend did with her painted rocks. I wanted to use inspirational quotes to make people think, to make people laugh, to make people feel simple joy at finding a secret message in a bottle.

By then, it was eight months after my husband’s passing. And while I was slowly emerging from the black hole of my grief, I was still having trouble with the living-alone-in-silence thing. I immersed myself into my new project and each day I spent time preparing the messages I wanted to include. I purchased a large supply of little bottles with cork tops and a variety of brightly coloured ribbons to tie around the necks. The ribbons would make the bottles easier to spot for people to find. 

In my initial batch, I lined up twenty-five bottles and began rolling up messages to put inside with the word “Message” clearly printed on the outside of the little scroll. I pushed the cork top in tightly and tied a curly ribbon around the neck, then finished it off by sticking a pretty jewel on the top. I was ready to begin my secret mission. 

My first stop was the Woodside Branch of the Oakville Library. I walked between the stacks of books, wary of anyone watching me. My heart was thumping as I secretly placed my little bottles on shelves, in the book return slot and at the Information Desk. In the reading area, I surreptitiously dropped one into the pocket of a woman’s jacket hanging on the back of a chair. 

I left fifteen bottles in the library and walked back to my car in the parking lot, giggling like a schoolgirl. Such a silly little act and I was filled with endorphins and felt joy in my heart for the first time in a very long, dry spell of sadness. I was hooked. I had ten bottles left and drove to Coronation Park and left them on benches and picnic tables.

In the months that followed, I dropped over five hundred of my bottles everywhere I went, concentrating mostly on locations in Oakville. I told no one about my project. When friends picked me up in their cars, I surreptitiously threw a bottle in the backseat when they brought me back home. 

I left bottles at my Oakville Pop Choir group, my doctor’s office and in many restaurant and movie theatre bathrooms. I placed them everywhere in my condo development – the pool, exercise room, lobby and lounge. One of my favourite places was putting them in planters in the malls, knowing whoever took care of the greenery would find a surprise at the next watering.

In December of that year, I left a batch of thirty little bottles with Christmas messages, in various spots in the Oakville Trafalgar Memorial Hospital. It hadn’t been that long ago that I had walked the same floors many times, pushing my husband in a wheelchair. 

You might be wondering if I was ever caught leaving a bottle. And, the answer is yes – at my hair salon. I’m sure the woman who caught me with my hand in her coat pocket thought she had stopped a thief. I would have loved to have seen her face when she found something in her pocket rather than something missing from it.

Sometimes on my outings, I waited around to watch who would pick up the bottles. Women were always more interested in opening them up to read the message, than men - who mostly ignored them or threw them in the garbage. Too cutesy looking for a man I guess. 

There was some landscaping going on at my condo and the male crew were working near my ground floor balcony. One night, I threw a bottle where the workmen would find it in the morning. It had a curly green ribbon tied around the neck and was easy to spot against the new topsoil.  

It took two days of the men walking around the bottle and kicking it aside, for one guy to finally pick it up. The others gathered around when he opened the message and read it out loud, “You can tell a lot about a man by how he handles a rainy holiday, lost luggage and tangled Christmas tree lights.” 

The workmen all had a good laugh. Then the guy who’d picked up bottle with the message threw it back on the ground, where it remains buried in new sod. 

It was the women I loved to watch when they found a bottle. First, they would pick it up and look around. Then, seeing the word ‘message’ written on the little scroll inside, they would often simply smile and put it in their pocket or purse unopened. Some would stop right there and open the bottle to read the message, look a bit perplexed and always take it with them. I began to realize, women were my audience and my messages became more geared to what women might like to read.

With each new batch of bottles, my mood lightened and the silence at home became more tolerable. My secret project gave me joy; it made me giggle and it made me feel a little bit like a crazy old lady. I wasn’t going to be giving it up any time soon. 

                                                            ---

Then, about six months into my message in a bottle project, the pandemic hit the world and everything changed. The isolation and sanitary protocols in place to combat this dreaded virus meant the end of my bottle project. I felt sad without my bottles to keep me company, immediately missing the pure joy they brought me with every secret drop I made. What was it about leaving messages in a bottle for perfect strangers that seemed to help me to heal? I’ve thought a lot about this.

When I started the project, I felt disconnected from the world around me; untethered from the safety net of my 42-year marriage. My husband was a man who had given me such a rich life of love, laughter and adventure. Yes, there were tears; there are always tears and sorrow in every marriage. But this was a man who always made me feel brave, who encouraged me to be myself, to get out there and take my place in the world. He made me laugh every day we were together. That man could tell one hell of a joke! 

I realize now that creating that secret project provided me with a lifeline to a world outside my grief. It connected me with something larger in the community and gave me a small sense of purpose. Perhaps I made people laugh, think, remember or inspired them in some small way to follow a dream. Or perhaps the women who found them simply used the cute little bottle to store their stud earrings. 

Either way, I felt the beginnings of a path to the next stage of my life. The pandemic certainly was a master class in learning to live alone. But with each passing month, I became more prepared and determined to find my way. 

While COVID raged on, I began to think about the people who’d found my bottles. Who were they? What was going on in their lives? Did the messages affect them in any way? Did it change a course of action or simply give them a good giggle or two? My imagination worked overtime, creating fictional lives for the women I may have touched. 

I began to write out my stories. I invented lives for women of varying ages and occupations. Life is always a struggle, so I made each character face a unique challenge at the time they picked up my bottles. 

I wrote about Eleanor, a timid librarian afraid of change. She found a bottle in the return slot at the library with a quote by Eleanor Roosevelt that read; A woman is like a teabag – you can’t tell how strong she is until you put her in hot water.  

Then there was Minerva (Minnie) Abigail Quackenbush, a feisty 87-year old whose only living relative wanted to take over her money and put her in a home. The message she found on a bench at the mall contained a mock-Latin phrase that said; Illegitimi Non Carborundum – don’t let the bastards grind you down. So she didn’t.

I created the teenage character of Delia, who’d stolen her mother’s credit card. She bought a bunch of stuff online and then didn’t know how to get out of her dilemma. Delia found a bottle outside her mother’s store with the message; Anyone who thinks sunshine is happiness has never danced in the rain. I wrote about how that simple phrase set her on a different path.

I loved writing about Henrietta, who thought she was looking for a man but ended up finding something entirely different. She discovered her little bottle in the pocket of her coat with a line from a Dr. Seuss book; Today you are you, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is You-er than you.  Could she have been the woman who caught me with my hand in her pocket at the hair salon? 

Then there was Celia, a reluctant grandmother-to-be who was afraid of being cast aside by her family when the new little interloper arrived. She picked up a bottle on the shelf of a baby store with a quote by Anne Lamott; Having a new baby is like suddenly getting the world’s worst roommate. Even Celia had to laugh at that one.

I continued to write my stories about the lives of the women whom I imagined picked up my bottles. I covered ages twelve years to eighty-seven and every decade in between. In each story, I wove a memory of my own life into the lives of the women I was writing about – secret little pieces of me tucked between the lines of truth and fiction. I included fragments of the lives of some people I’ve known, and I inserted some of my travel adventures along the way. Each story was a mosaic of little memories and big imagination.  

Now, the end of my message in a bottle stories is approaching. I feel rejuvenated and ready to say goodbye to each one of my characters; all brave women who faced their challenges and found the courage they needed to move forward; women who kept me company during the long days of pandemic isolation. They stayed with me on my healing journey to the next stage of my life.

In reality, I’m not deluding myself into thinking my messages made a profound difference in the lives of people who found my bottles. But I had a lot of fun imagining it did. The friend of mine in Cobourg who inspired me to create this project passed away a few months ago. But her memory lives on in the beautiful rocks she painted for people to enjoy.

Three and a half years have passed since my husband died. I’m thankful the roar of silence is gone from my home now and I feel stronger to take on what comes my way. I miss my beloved partner every day, but I’m forever grateful for the life we had together and the great adventures we shared. I’m happy, hopeful and brimming with new ideas for the days ahead. Sometimes, a part of us must die before another part of us can come to life.

I will leave you with one of my favourite quotes by Pema Chodron: 

To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest. 

Amen to that!

Thanks to the Oakville News for publishing this series and to you for reading my stories. 

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