I remember standing in the counselors’ offices at my high school just a few days after my sister died, a place they had opened up (there was no school that day because of parent-teacher conferences) if anyone wanted to go talk. I was there because Denise and I had shared the same counselor and I believe she had asked me to stop by.
There were no students there and through a discussion I don’t remember with the other counselors who were there, I remember one saying, “That’s what no one talks about after someone dies- the little things that are important in everyday life.”
She was referring to the fact that I had just said I wasn’t sure who would cut my hair as Denise had been doing it (and giving me perms but that’s another story).
I have always thought about this– we forget how much of life occurs in the routine of everyday life. Someone I know also once said, as the Catholic church ventured into Ordinary Time after Advent one year, how extraordinary things happen during Ordinary Time.
We often believe that the greatest events in our lives happen in the biggest events, but if we take a step back, we see that our stories are told in the routine of our daily lives. This was the case of how I wrote my book, Route 66 Dreams. While, yes, the Danielson family is on vacation, the story is really about those quiet moments on the trip of the changing landscape, lounging by the pool, and going to the laundromat.
I received an email some months ago from a man I don’t know. He said he was a 72-year-old grandfather and had picked up my book to read and thought he would hate it. He said, “You made what could have been a very mundane story very interesting and touching.”
Our stories are being told as we travel through each day because the opportunities, the moments, everything is right there with us. The question is, are we aware of what’s around us to know the story we could tell when we get far enough down the road to look back in the rearview mirror and see it, feel it, sense it?
As a little side note to this, someone else believes I’ve accomplished this, too, as Route 66 Dreams was named a finalist in the New Mexico historical fiction category in the New Mexico book awards contest. Please keep your fingers crossed that the book wins so that in the routine of an ordinary day in the next two weeks, I experience that moment that tells the story of finding out that I won the contest.