Early morning sounds in northwest Arkansas: the hum of tires on I-540–a reassuring sound; the distant thunder of wheels on the track and a whistle as the train comes or goes. No wind blowing this morning or rain drumming on leaves but a chorus of robins greets the day. Inside my house, the coffee pot gurgles in a friendly sort of way. Mother’s Day 2013 is a lovely memory. I ate breakfast with my children at their church and attended services with them. Then Matt grilled lunch for us and the afternoon passed visiting with him and Dawn and playing with the children. My bouquet of beautiful red roses sits in quiet perfection atop the counter. The roses will be with me longer than that one special day but the memories will last forever.
Sunday I wore paint-spatters to church because Saturday I decided to spruce up the mailbox and porch supports. If the paint sticks to them like it does to my hands, that will be a good thing. I finished Mother’s Day by mowing my yard. A neighbor, driving by, stopped to ask if I had a nice day. I’m glad to live on a quiet street where people know each other.
Barbara Burgess’ and my book, Grave Shift, is making inroads in the world of cozy mysteries. And while it is gaining in popularity, other tales are swirling in my mind and finding their way to life via the computer. Stories are all around me just waiting to be told.
When I taught kindergarteners, sometimes the children and I would take a nature walk. We gathered fascinating things along the way: pretty leaves of different shapes, a rock with the tiny imprint of a fossilized animal, a pinecone or two. We took all these items back to the classroom and arranged them on poster board. These separate things came together as a work of art. A story is like that. An inscrutable expression here, a chance remark there, an unexplained occurrence somewhere else; the writer arranges them in an intriguing manner and they, together, become…maybe a best seller? (“Hope springs eternal” as Alexander Pope said.)
I wonder if reality is like a story? Sometimes to me life is truly a mystery, the why behind the happenings. But perhaps our Creator is arranging, out of the bits and pieces of events, a work of art. Maybe someday I can look back and see the pattern, the beauty or the importance of what today seems enigmatic or obscure. I can manage the plot and characters in a tale of fiction but I’m in charge of my own life only up to a certain point. Like the familiar early morning sounds around me, it is comforting to know that Someone far wiser than I is the ultimate Author.
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