Never trust a mountain to keep a secret

    On the way to a family reunion in North Carolina, I diverted to Colfax to pick up some riders. (By the way, if you are not from Colfax, you are likely misprouncing it. Locals say Call-fax, not Cole-fax.)

    I arrived at my niece's house and was soon on the road again with eight-months-pregnant Layne riding shotgun and her young son in the back seat. Layne and I live in different states and have few chances for face-to-face interactions, so we planned to take full advantage of this jaunt from her house to the top of a mountain.

    The dialogue from that day is gone like the wind, but I imagine that as soon as I put the car in drive, we dove into something akin to transforming our marriages into perfect ones, strategizing relationships at work, or figuring out God, once and for all. I do remember that as the wheels of my car rolled over I-40, the wheels of our minds were turning just as fast. We lost ourselves in deep conversation, and we would soon find out we were lost in more ways than one.

From Chaos to Connection

 

    My niece announced on social media that she wrote and published a book. When I read the post, I reacted with quiet jealously. I coiled inside myself like nine-year-old me when my friend stepped onto the school bus wearing the prettiest dress I had ever seen -- clumps of purple grapes and green leaves splashed against an off-white fabric.

    I am not proud of those reactions. For now, I will skip over the childhood longings and move on to my niece's exciting, shattering news. Before my readers flail me with a big stick, please know that I congratulated Lori, and that I created my own social media post touting her accomplishment, so my friends could see. 

    Nevertheless, I felt a twinge of despair, and this is why:

The saddest words ever written or said? It's a matter of perception.

 

    Out of the blue, I needed to read some poetry, which is weird, because I rarely read poetry, nor do I write poetry. I have penned a few verses mostly in song, but I am not a poet. Nevertheless, when an inner voice commands, I comply. So, I searched for a book I bought in my twenties, back in the day when I belonged to a mail-order book club. 

    After scanning several of my bookshelves, I held in my hands The Treasury of American Poetry, selected by Nancy Sullivan. I laid it atop the tall stack of books on my nightstand. 

    That night, I turned the pages to find few lines that held my attention. Undeterred, I plowed through the murk, knowing that in those eight-hundred and thirty-eight pages, I would find, well, I don't know what I expected to find, but when I found it, I would know. Over the next couple of weeks, I touched the poems of Anne Bradstreet, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, only to wonder if I could possibly continue on this curious mission. 

    Then, I hit pay dirt.