The Gift

Cricket McRae

Some of my friends are serious about birthdays. Serious. Not content with a mere, single-day hoorah, they celebrate for at least a week: birthday lunch with one friend, birthday dinners with other friends, an intimate celebration with their man (yes, these are all women – well, there’s one guy, but he still has a man), another get together with parents and siblings and usually a nice chocolate sheet cake in the break room at work.

Not me. In fact, I once forgot my own birthday until UPS delivered a package from someone obviously more on the ball than I was. I’m afraid this also means I’m not always good about other people’s birthdays. But I make an effort because I know it’s important, and everyone deserves to have a fuss made over them.

Last weekend I turned forty-seven. My guy is much like me about birthdays. He gave me a funny card, a practical gift, a single tulip, and took me out for brunch. No fuss, no muss, no bother, just eggs Benedict. He’d already brought home a flourless chocolate cake for Arbor Day, and it was way too soon to repeat the decadence.

(Side note: We celebrate Arbor Day largely because Hallmark doesn’t try to make us. The cake said, “You’ve got me treed.” What a romantic, eh?)

And that was that. Until …

The mailman brought a box to the door in the afternoon. I have a friend who still sends me birthday presents. They are thoughtful, often funny, and distinctly personal. This woman knows me well. After all, we’ve been pals for thirty-three years.

Her gifts were, as usual, spot on and much appreciated. But this year the card took the cake. So to speak.

She wrote me a story.

Two pages, about one teenaged girl teaching another one how to drive a stick shift on the dump road outside of town. About almost getting hit by a truck. About how they made up a song about it.

About a friendship overflowing with laughter that ended up spanning more than three decades.

The little story is so well-written. Poignant sans sentiment and intensely personal to yours truly. It made me cry. Hell, I’m tearing up as I write this now. That this thoughtful gift, utterly free and utterly priceless, came from her when I know she’s swamped with work, family, and a dozen other obligations just floors me.

But there’s more. I’m working up to the deadline for my next book, and that always makes me a little crazy. Okay, a lot crazy. I planned for the stress better this time, as well as the inevitable distractions, visits from friends and family, etc., but let’s face it – I’m still crazy. In this frame of mind, writing loses its luster. After this many go-rounds, I know it’ll come back, but the word that comes to mind when I sit down in front of the keyboard yet again to fuss and rewrite and add scenes and make decisions is slog.

That precious, two-page story turned out to be a gift in another, unexpected way: It reminded me of the power of words, of how much I love them, and that stories are truly important. It shifted my attitude at a time when it sorely needed a shift.

There just isn’t a Thank You big enough.

Rules of Engagement

by Nina Wright

A funny thing happened on the way to writing this blog post. I got engaged . . . to be married. Here I was, all set to blog about “unexpected guest” characters—you know, those fictional folks you don’t see coming who nonetheless show up on the page and change everything—when my significant other slipped a ring on my finger. A very nice ring, I might add.

The Unexpected Guest Character post will have to wait because my new status as fiancée has filled my head with entirely different notions. And I’m not talking about wedding plans although The Event will certainly require some forethought. Not to mention the fact that we're contemplating a move to another part of the country. No, what I’m thinking about now is the way my attitudes toward love and lust manifest in what I write.

During the years when my previous marriage—a long one gradually destroyed by his preference for booze over employment—was in decline, the women in my fiction were either leaving their husbands or coping with the death of their husbands. That includes my first teen novel and my first Whiskey Mattimoe mystery. In the years following my divorce, I wrote about women falling into passionate love with thrilling but inappropriate men. Let's just say I enjoyed the research.

My ex insisted he never saw the divorce coming. Being drunk most of the time made it hard for him to keep up. He might have got a clue if he had read Whiskey on the Rocks or Homefree, or even considered the titles. My whimsical play Cherchez Dave Robicheaux offered a big tip: the heartsick protagonist leaves her husband for a fictional character. My protagonist was more desperate than I was.

Enough about what came before. What’s happening now is that I’m engaged to a tender, funny, generous man who puts family and friends first. Although more into sports than literature, he used to be a professional speechwriter; thus, he respects my work. I met my fiancé when I wasn't looking for love, yet I knew almost immediately from our ease with each other that he was Mr. Right. Never mind that he wasn't my “type,” and I'd never written about loving a man like him.

In the movie Definitely, Maybe the hero concludes that finding the right partner may be more a matter of when than whom. Put another way, you have to be ready. I opened my heart and recognized a fine man when I met him. The rest was easy. But if I'd met my guy a couple years earlier, I doubt we would have clicked. Timing, as they say, is everything. And I'll go a step further: anything I've ever tried to force has failed, be it a relationship, a storyline, or a laugh.

Fiction is the realm where I play with my fears and fantasies. But life is where I live them, and it offers more surprises than I can make up.

Your turn. Tell us a little about the relationships, romantic or otherwise, you've built on the page . . . if you dare!

P.S. Happy Birthday, Inkspot! This blog was conceived one year ago today. Jess Lourey gets credit for thinking of it, Joe Moore for building it, Keith Raffel for scheduling it, and the rest of us for contributing essays once a month.