Sometimes when missed opportunities become new opportunities, something completely unexpected and beyond your imagination begins to unfold. It rises up and starts to spill over the rim of your cup…

This morning, I received an unexpected message from an author friend that triggered a thought, taking me and my mug of freshly dripped coffee to my chair where I picked up my pen. There was so much swirling around in my head I wanted to capture from the Wisconsin Writers Association Conference (WWA) this past weekend.

Then Odie, the big black and brown furry German Shepherd rescue next door, started barking and I could feel my tired-out self and somewhat ragged nerves begin to rattle. Almost, the inspiration slipped away but I clung to it as our dog Fannie joined the brigade of barks. (Do barks make brigades…?)

Why even bother, I thought, rubbing my temples as Todd opened the back door to stick his head out and say, “It’s okay, Odie,” when Oshie, the neighbor’s second mostly black, less furry and a bit smaller German Shepherd rescue pup, (who’d been kept in a cage too small for her, for far too long) began to bark, too. (Oshie had to relearn how to walk when she came home with my neighbor.) The dogs are loud barkers that I’ve grown to love like crazy, even though they can drive me crazy, because of, not in spite of, their traumatic pasts. And that’s the very thing that sends me to my knees, (sometimes only in my mind since kneeling gives me Charlie horses in my calves) because I know that I’m loved, too, even with my assorted past with all its “missed opportunities”.

A sudden silence ascends over the house, the barking is now only intermittent, far off in the distance and for a moment, I wonder if it is only my focus that’s changed…but there is silence, such that, I can hear humming in my ears and a high soft pitch that almost tingles. (Am I getting my dad’s tinnitus?) This is when I know I’ve come to the sacred place of stillness and silence within myself, regardless of any clatter happening around me. This is when I take a deep breath, exhale and say, “Thank you.”

And I listen.

What’s that? Oh right, the message from Larry, the author who writes beautifully researched and carefully studied books and blogs about family history, and other things, that transcend time. In other words, he writes the kind of words I hope to write, words that will outlast us by, well, who can fathom how long?

Words that bring the past into the present, merging generations, enabling us to glean wisdom otherwise lost, enabling us to better understand ourselves because we understand where we’ve come from. It’s why I wrote my first book (Conversations with Dad) and now my second nonfiction narrative biography (Just Along for the Ride). More on that soon, I hope.

Larry wrote a little message to me this morning letting me know he was at the conference this weekend. We only know each other through our words. He has been instrumental in slowing me down to dig deeper, to gather up the jewels that shine light on meaningful moments, past and present, then construct those moments into a meaningful message for someone we may never know or even know that they’ve read our words. All we know is that the words mattered to us, helped shape us in some way, then we let them go so they can travel on to visit someone else. 

Larry let me know he saw me at the conference talking to people but couldn’t remember my name, so he waited for the name that never came and we missed an opportunity to meet in person. But, see how I’m here writing about him, unexpectedly, sensing that somehow we will connect further because I’m going to tag him later when I share this post?

But first, there a few important things I heard that I don’t want to lose from a very important weekend at the WWA Conference in La Crosse.

“Everything comes back around to help me,” Keynote, Author/Director of Iowa Writers’ Workshop Samantha Chan said, as she talked about where she finds inspiration for her material.

Everything…

If Oshie the rescue could write, imagine how those years in the cage would have shaped her into the dog writer she became, and then after she was chosen to go to a new home filled with love and caring, compassion and healing.

“As writers, we hope to untie a knot inside ourselves so that someone else maybe won’t have to go through what we did,” Keynote Author Ann Garvin said.

I was so sad to have missed all the beautiful words she shared, but was delayed by the beauty of the fog hovering over the river Saturday morning. It was a majestic mist that literally took my breath away when I saw it out my Stoney Creek Hotel room window, threw on some comfy favorites (black Lulu Lemmon pants Todd gave me, and a black Gap hoodie from the sale rack) casually tied my black Converse (I also have them in gray, white and red) then literally stayed in those clothes all day because I felt so at home and at peace with myself.

Now that’s a miracle.

Outside, down a path, I discovered a scene fit for the finest fairy tale. “We write stories to figure out a map forward,” Ann said in her closing words, “so that, readers don’t have to go through what the writer did.” The fear, despair, the grind, the grief…

Which makes me think about writing itself. Of editing, the process of revisions, the grind, the fear, sometimes despair that interferes, the doubt and fatigue that steal the spark—the almost other-worldly sense we experience in the process of creating, as we fight with commas and conjunctions, prepositions and phrasing, until our heads literally hurt.

After two years of working on completing that first draft of the novel, and two more years of revisions, my head hurt. But then, unexpectedly, my Muse the Spirit, has led me back to the place I began, where mist hovers majestically, where trees once again have personalities, where the landscape is my castle and the sky my ceiling. Where people are friends and not threats, waiting to be discovered, just like places within and around me.

Places where Love waits to embrace, where Hope points you forward. Where once again, you pick up your pen because the excitement within you froths up like a latte, spilling over the rim of your cup, for others to partake, where I have even imagined saying to God Himself, “Do you want a sip…?”

The place where your head is anointed with oil and you know for certain that goodness and mercy will follow you all the days of your life and that you will dwell in the house of the Lord forever…

Sometimes missed opportunities become the perfect opportunities to create something new…See there? Something new? How it’s rising up…?

_______

This is for Larry and Lisa and Laurie, Rose Bingham, Jim Landwehr, Julie Zachman, Naomi Yaeger, Valerie Shaw, Rosie Klepper, Anne Tigan, Cate Miller, Fred Poss, Laurie Dennis, Keridak Silk and Barbara Malcolm—my WWA Critique Writing Group pals, and all of you (you know who you are) who brought me up and out of my cozy cocoon. (Wings are so much better.)😃🧚‍♀️🙏

Some special moments from the Conference—

Fear not, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine. When you pass through the waters, I will be with you…Isaiah 43:1