But turn back I did, in time to see a leaf winding its way toward baby Grace’s head. It could not have caused any wind on her, buoyed as it was by the magical fall air that tripped through the trees. And yet Grace seemed to feel it before its touch. Her head fell back and her pudgy, sticky hand reached up as if to catch it. As she did, she grinned to reveal those miraculous two razors of enamel in her delicious gum.
I watched as the leaf did back flips down toward my daughter. I saw Grace’s eyes sparkle with infantile magic. A lock of auburn hair, the only one she possessed, blew against her eye and she giggled as the leaf drifted against the collar that was smeared with her sweet potato lunch.
The moment stood still for me. Grace was frozen in her two toothed smile; the leaf was frozen against cottony warmth. Years later I would be able to close my eyes and see the very point on the exact street at that precise moment in time. I would be able to return—retreat—to that memory, tracing the leaf’s downward spiral against the sky.
I know with certainty that that leaf did not fall but was sent. And I know from Whom it was sent. At that moment I felt more alive than ever before. I felt the soles of my feet, the hangnail tearing at my thumb, the ventricles swelling in my lungs, and the cartilage releasing and expanding in my knee.
I knew at that moment that my top was spinning, sometimes wildly, sometimes cautiously, but spinning, spinning, spinning. I realized that the beauty of tops lies not as much in where and how they spin, but in the fact that they do spin: day upon day, movement upon fluid movement. I saw with unimaginable clarity that endings are sometimes beginnings.
On that day, I knew that I had done nothing in my life to deserve such a trivial delight as an autumn leaf or such a precious gift as Grace. And yet both were mine, given from a Love that paints our worlds a mirage of brilliant hues.
And smiles back when we notice.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
AT MY CHILDHOOD DINNER TABLE, suppers were anything but sedate. Sometimes lively from teasing and laughter, other times loud from arguments over religion and politics, the family table fed not only our bodies, but our souls and our minds.
I remember discussing religion at that Formica table of my childhood and volleying questions back and forth across the lazy Susan. As I grew, so did my faith, and it was one that did not preclude questions. As an adult, I have lost and found faith; I have raged at God; I have wept for His forgiveness. All of these I have done as my parents’ child. They consumed my rantings without regurgitating pat answers. Rather, they answered with a silence that said, “We know. But still. We believe.”
Many years have passed since our nuclear family of five gathered at 6:00 p.m. sharp. It has been decades since we clamored for the last butterscotch brownie and made up rhymes about the rutabagas. My brothers and I have founded our own families and our own dinner tables, over which noisy chatter and discussion hover like a blessing. Around each of these, I believe my parents are silent, smiling guests.
Like most others, our imperfect family was perfected by love. In days of celebration, in times of angst, we gather because we are family. I am thankful for brothers who teased me so mercilessly that I learned not to take myself too seriously. I am thankful for parents who set the table and called us to it. And I am thankful for sharing my life now with a man who knows of no better place to be at six o’clock than at our family table.
My faith journey is not unlike Jo’s. We are all prone to be boisterously thankful when good things happen to us. And so it is only natural that our sorrows carry shouts of why, and—for us believers—why, God? If we view the good, the joyous as gifts from God, does logic not compel us to therefore define bad things that befall us as His absence?
How easy to focus on that which we don’t have, rather than our blessings—to view ourselves as victims rather than survivors. And it’s that type of glass-half-empty thinking that makes life pass us by. For me, my faith gelled—and, in many ways my life began—when I was able to see God in all things good and bad, as a constant in the human continuum that knows the highest highs and the lowest lows. When I learned to listen to my still, small voice.
Many thanks to Brooke Warner and Shannon Green of She Writes Press and the community of talented female writers they represent. Thanks also to Julie Powers Gallagher for her early advice and encouragement, and to Books Forward for championing this novel. I appreciate Jenn Kimble’s generational input as an alumna of the Class of 1993. Finally, special thanks to my early readers: Vicki, Kim, Anna, Susan, Lydia, Nancy, and Elena. Entrusting someone with your manuscript is only slightly less terrifying than handing over a newborn infant, and I appreciate their tender care.
If you are a person of faith, it is my hope that you will see some of your own journeys and questionings in these pages. If you are not a believer, then you are still a child of Creation and hopefully this story will touch the humanity in you—the part of us that asks why and struggles to find hope and happiness in a world where sometimes it seems all is for naught.
As a parent myself, I wonder if my own parents knew, at that nightly dinner, that they were sowing seeds of faith and hope. I wonder if they saw their three children of faith, with voices loud and questions louder, and knew that they did something really important.
I hope so.
MNC
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
© Meredith James
A NATIVE SOUTHERNER, Melissa Norton Carro has over twenty years of experience in marketing and communications, including her own business, Norton Carro Communications. She has edited textbooks and been a non-fiction ghostwriter, as well as a regular copyeditor for Gannett Publishing. She received her Bachelor of Arts, with Honors, from Vanderbilt University, where she currently works. Carro was a closet fiction writer for years while raising three daughters, and Mt. Moriah’s Wake is her first novel. She writes a weekly blog, In the Middle, about life in the sandwich generation and is currently working on another novel, Bagels at Nine. She lives in Nashville with her husband and blue heeler mutt. Learn more at melissacarro.com.
SELECTED TITLES FROM SHE WRITES PRESS
She Writes Press is an independent publishing company founded to serve women writers everywhere. Visit us at www.shewritespress.com.
Magic Flute by Patricia Minger
$16.95, 978-1-63152-093-8
When a car accident puts an end to ambitious flutist Liz Morgan’s dreams, she returns to her childhood hometown in Wales in an effort to reinvent her path.
The Fourteenth of September by Rita Dragonette
$16.95, 978-1-63152-453-0
In 1969, as mounting tensions over the Vietnam War are dividing America, a young woman in college on an Army scholarship risks future and family to go undercover in the anti-war counterculture when she begins to doubt her convictions—and is ultimately forced to make a life-altering choice as fateful as that of any Lottery draftee.
The Rooms Are Filled by Jessica Null Vealitzek
$16.95, 978-1-938314-58-2
The coming-of-age story of two outcasts—a nine-year-old boy who just lost his father, and a closeted young woman—brought together by circumstance.
Profound and Perfect Things by Maribel Garcia
$16.95, 978-1631525414
When Isa, a closeted lesbian with conservative Mexican parents, has a one-night stand that results in an unwanted pregnancy, her sister, Cristina adopts the baby—but twelve years later, Isa, who regrets giving up her child, threatens to spill the secret of her daughter’s true parentage.
Beautiful Garbage by Jill DiDonato
$16.95, 978-1-938314-01-8
Talented but troubled young artist Jodi Plum leaves suburbia for the excitement of the city—and is soon swept up in the sexual politics and downtown art scene of 1980s New York.
The Wiregrass by Pam Webber
$16.95, 978-1-63152-943-6
A story about a summer of discontent, change, and dangerous mysteries in a small Southern Wiregrass town.
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Melissa Norton Carro, Mt. Moriah's Wake
Mt. Moriah's Wake Page 33
