But what is it's message?

This weekend I finished reading a book and realized with horror that I had nothing to read!* In a mild panic, I scoured my bookshelf for something I hadn't read enough times to be able to outline the plot from memory. My eye fell on Ursula K. Le Guin's book, A Wizard of Earthsea. That might work. Poking around the author's website, I ran across a wonderful little article that might be of interest to anyone who is engaged in writing or reading fiction. The article is called A Message About Messages, and it describes exactly how I look at meaning and message in fiction. Here's a little teaser:

Readers—kids and adults—ask me about the message of one story or another. I want to say to them, "Your question isn't in the right language."

As a fiction writer, I don't speak message. I speak story. Sure, my story means something, but if you want to know what it means, you have to ask the question in terms appropriate to storytelling. Terms such as message are appropriate to expository writing, didactic writing, and sermons—different languages from fiction.

* "Nothing to read" in this case means "no unread work of fiction that suited my current mood."

The Dreaming Boat

I sit and stare through the window with its chipped and peeling frame. The ivy around the window has turned green, and a robin looks for worms in the tiny yard behind the house. I only notice these things out of habit. Today, everywhere I look, I see her face, hanging suspended in my memory by a single, jagged strand of longing.

"I need you," I whisper. "I wish you were here."

She doesn't answer. I sigh and lower my gaze to the worn surface of my desk. I pick up a tiny pewter sailboat and cradle it in my palm. I still remember when Rose gave it to me.

We didn't have any money on our first anniversary, but I brought Rose breakfast in bed. She sat up, her eyes bright, her hair still tousled from sleep. She pulled a little box tied with green ribbon out from under her pillow and handed it to me. It held the sailboat, of course. She knew I loved to watch the sailboats in the bay, gliding over the water, free as the wind and waves. She said she had found it at the second-hand shop for a nickel and couldn't resist.

"It's to carry your dreams so they won't get lost along the way." Her smile lit up the room.

I look at the clock. Only ten. I still have most of the worst day of the year to get through. The day I lost her.

Our daughter Judith has tried to help. She does laundry and fixes meals, leaving me notes about how to heat everything up. She and Harry always invite me over for Sunday dinner. But it wasn't what Rose did that I miss.

I hear the screen door bang and get up from my chair. Kevin never remembers to knock. A pair of bright eyes peer around the door frame. My heart catches. Her eyes. A bundle of six-year-old energy rockets across the room and flings his arms around me.

"Grandpa!"

I pat his back and muss his hair--wild brown hair, just like hers.

"Grandpa, are you sad?"

"You've gotten so big and strong you squooshed my tears out with that hug."

His wide grin lights up the room.

"What's that?" He looks at the boat, still in my hand. “Can I hold it?”

I tip the little boat from my wrinkled palm into his smooth one. “It’s a dreaming boat.”

"What's it do?"

"Well, you put your dreams in it, the things you care about more than anything, and it carries them for you so they won't get lost." I think a minute. "Maybe it's time for you to have it."

Kevin's eyes go wide. "Really? Does it work?"

I look at this small creature, full of wonder, curiosity, and light—just like Rose had been, even at the last, just before the cancer took her. I place my hand on his shoulder and force my voice past the lump in my throat. "Of course it does."

Praying in Ink

In her book, Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia, Elizabeth Gilbert writes about talking to God by writing a dialogue in her notebook. I think my journal is a little like that. It is filled with entries that begin in despair and end in exultation, entries that begin in confusion and end in clarity. Amy says I should gather them all together and write a book!

Is this my talking with God? I would be uncomfortable putting a "Thus saith the Lord" on anything that comes out of my pen, but it does seem to be a key way of finding peace for me. It forces me to slow my thoughts with the physical rhythm of my pen and focus them with the words on the page. It is a way to be still and know, a way to quiet the clamor so I can listen, a way to clear the clutter so I can see and understand.

So these words become my prayer. This page becomes my cathedral. Here I am in the middle of it, naked and quiet, listening for a still, small voice in the scratching of my pen.

Cruisin'

Woo-hoo! My new bike came yesterday. I wrestled with the awful instructions (which seemed to cover a variety of bike models, none of which resembled mine to any great degree), got most of the parts attached (some correctly), and took my first spin around the block. What fun! The kids and I are looking forward to riding up to the library together on Saturday for our first family bike ride. If I lived in Kirksville where I work, I'd probably get rid of our second van and ride all the time.

The bike is a single speed retro beach cruiser, complete with removable front basket for errands, cushy spring-loaded seat for my delicate heinie, and a bike horn from Dennis and Andrea that is truly a thing of beauty. I'll post some pictures soon.