When we're inches away from something great and don't even know it...

Last January for my first MFA residency, I stayed in a bed & breakfast called Irving House. I had a tiny, wonderful room, a twin bed, a desk, and a shared bathroom. I walked 15 minutes to classes after a hearty organic breakfast, and I enjoyed cookies or cake and hot tea when I got back around 11 every night. The place is a treasure in itself.

Then I watch Julie & Julia the other night with Andrew and learn Julia Child's former home and kitchen studio is just down the road from where I was. I walked down that road every day! Julia's house is a little farther down than I usually went, but I'm sure on one of my explorations I walked right past it. I'm sure if I had known, I would have stopped and sighed. The air was cold, but I could have imagined the smell of melting butter and warmed right up.

I'm staying at the Irving House again this coming January. Guess what? Of course I'm going to walk by Julia's house every day on the way to class. Irving House (A) to Julia's house (B) and Lesley (C), via a shortcut across Harvard Divinity School, of course.



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I wonder how many times in life we don't recognize a treasure right next door?

She Likes Rainy Days the Best

Sometimes I know a story is right when the whole world seems to spin it into my lap. Today, I got one of those stories. It started as a journal entry a few days ago, just after a heavy rain. I wrote about the glow of freshly washed leaves, the darkness of the tree trunks, the lambent light in the air. Yesterday I decided to turn it into a story somehow. Over night the rains came. Gentle thunderstorms early in the morning, then off and on showers all day long. The world was telling me to write. Slowly, as I reworked my journal entry, a character emerged. A woman whose desire to be reborn is mirrored in the nascent quality of the world after a rain. The journal entry transformed into a plot, as the steady beat of raindrops on my window set the pace. How perfect that a story inspired by a rainy day got to be finished on a rainy day. The first line of the story is true for me, too: "She likes rainy days the best."