Jo-Ann Mapson

Oh God, Point Me in the Right Direction

The pastures are green here in Lexington, Kentucky. Yesterday was Derby Day, prom night, and a full moon. As I drove myself from the Cincinnati airport, I saw (in this order) a bomb-sniffing dog, lots of cows, but nary a horse. Had my hotel room service repast of salad and chocolate cake, watched "Brother, Where Art thou," and called home to hear the snow report. In Anchorage it's in the mid-forties and the snow is melting.

One perk of being on the road promoting a new book is seeing family and old friends. I spent a couple of days at my sister C.J.'s in Phoenix, where we shopped, prayed for the Phoenix Suns to beat Sacramento (and were sorely disappointed), and also watched neuro-radioligists perform an angiogram on a sixty-one-year-old woman's brain. If I thought abdominal ultrasound was interesting, this experience far exceeded my definition. As the dye traversed the brain's pathways, there appeared on the screen what looked like a frail branch of coral. I was caught up in the beauty of it, trying on different similes. Soon, however, the doctors pounced on a tiny squiggle that looked like a tiny appendix: an aneurysm, they said, with the utter joy of archeologists finding a definitive shard at a remote dig. Will she be okay, I asked a technician, and he offhandedly answered sure, nothing to it. We insert a coil and take care of it in a matter of minutes. Our views of life and death were so different I thought about nothing else for hours.

Had lunch with Barbara Kingsolver in Tucson. She was pregnant with Lily last time we saw each other, and now Lily's starting kindergarten. While we chatted, grackles begged for bread near our table, and I threw them pieces of my sandwich I wasn't really hungry for. Barbara's voice is just like her books, soft in delivery, but passionate, and not one single word wasted. I started missing her before the car pulled out of the parking lot.

My buddy Alexis reports via e-mail that her mom had bypass surgery and is doing well. Earlene is at Malice Domestic in D.C., and Kelly is in Palmer, Alaska, having just finished the semester at Matanuska-Susitna College. Hopefully by now, Jacqui has managed to Fed-Ex her horse from California to Alaska without too much drama (subject for a whole other essay!). I feel connected to my girlfriends no matter wherefore they are these days.

And a friend I thought I'd lost forever has recently opened his heart to me again. This is someone I have loved since the minute I laid eyes on him, recognizing not just a kindred spirit, but in many ways, the other half of my heart. I once told him that had we known each other in caveman days, we would have been the guys drawing pictures on the cave walls. He laughs at me, but that's okay. Never enough laughter in the world.

It is times like these that make me realize how small my wishes and I are in the universe. What is meant to be happens despite how much I try to control it. Things unfold, like the Kentucky thunder and lightning currently playing outside my hotel room-at no charge. Nature's power and beauty are so much larger than any story I could conjure at my keyboard, as is the gift of friendship. What's a human to do but bask in that? Teeter on the edge of vulnerability and feel true intimacy. Listen with the heart's ear to what is not being said. Comfort one another. But mostly, love back.

My sense of religion is as confused as one of my plotlines, but I do know this: God is inordinately fond of picking up my life and shaking it like a snow globe. When the sparkles settle, I look around and see what it is I am supposed to be doing that I've been ignoring, which usually involves loving somebody extra hard who has hurt me in the past. In doing so, we somehow manage to work out our differences, and become better creatures.

Simple lesson, but I spend so much energy looking for ways around it.

Today I sat for an hour and a half in a really great bookstore feeling crappy because I had sold only three hardcover books. I talked to two different women-one older, well dressed, refined, and extremely spirited. Life had been hard on the other woman, but all the same, she radiated kindness. They each bought The Wilder Sisters. I fought the urge to abandon my authorly duties and run off to have coffee with them. Since I didn't sell very many books, I returned to the hotel feeling a little down, to learn that BGC was in the 900's on Amazon.com. Considering they sell over a million different titles, I'm flying.

Outside, the thunder rolls. Let go of grudges and worries, it tells me. Open your heart for the great good future I have planned for you. And for just a moment, the sky cracks open and turns golden, revealing its hidden light, and I do, too, and I imagine God is smiling a weary but pleased smile.

More later,
Jo-Ann

^Top