Lynn's Comments: During the years when my children were very young, I did not have the option of going back to school, although I would have liked to. My life in a tiny remote mining town in northern Manitoba provided an education of another kind! The character "Elly" is not me. She is someone I MIGHT have been, given other circumstances. My real life wasn't nearly as plausible as Elly Patterson's.
Putting myself in her position, I imagined what it would be like to have not accomplished my educational goals and in the soap opera of life, to be playing a minor supporting role. Aside from her identity as a loving, caring and competent mom, Elly was "Mrs. Doctor so and so"...and she wanted more.