Bend in the River

Before me a bend in the river,

No hint of what lies ahead,

Except the sound of rushing water.

Meredith finished recording her thought safely in the little black notebook then riffled the pages; the entries in various inks, the handwriting dependent on her mood as she'd written. All those ideas, safe, to be called upon when needed. She closed the notebook and patted its soft, black cover with a sigh.

Would they ever be needed, she wondered. Or would this book of scraps and pieces, in the end, become the complete works of Meredith Andrews? Still she felt better knowing they were there.

Once she'd carried bits of paper in her pockets. She'd write down her fragments of verse and story-line as soon as they occurred, so they wouldn't slip her mind like cats through a door left ajar. But the scraps and bits got lost or forgotten (or turned out to be hopelessly illegible) too often and her ideas gone. So she bought the notebook and repeated the thought in her head until she was able to record it there, valiantly resisting the temptation to continue writing mentally and lose the potential gem in the process. She wished she could afford a new phone instead of the funky, basic one she'd had for years. Then she could not only record the ideas, but allow herself to continue. The recording could be her rough draft and she would already have a start. Except that she'd need a computer to take the next step and safely store the recordings, and she couldn't afford that either.

She sat pondering, reluctant to move on to life in Mundania, where her thoughts were restricted and not very interesting most of the time. It was only when she was out walking or driving or waiting in line that her mind could retreat to that place where the ideas came from. That was one of her problems. She could snatch the floating thought and hold it until she had written it down, but by that time she'd usually emerged from the state that would allow her to continue. Either that or she had something else to do or somewhere else to be or the phone rang or someone knocked on the door or...she was stressing herself out just sitting there thinking about her normal inability to think.

Meredith gave herself a little pep talk, not an uncommon occurrence.

“Well, I'm too young, not to mention too poor, to retire and write full time, so I either have to hang it up or kick-start the process somehow. I'm accomplishing exactly nada by getting stuck in this loop of negative thought. I know what isn't working, so what will? For one thing, I could use a little luck.”

Luck! That thought, combined with the memory of the radio in her car, which she'd ignored while holding the 'bend in the river' thought in her head, meshed with a mental click. They were announcing the winning lottery numbers. She bought a lottery ticket last week! This was something she never, ever did. In fact, that was why she'd done it. She was trying to change her routine, do things she never did, get out of this maddening rut. So, while checking out at the grocery store, holding a thought about a sad clown and an escaping balloon that she only later identified as a relevant symbol in her own life, she bought a lottery ticket. Then she'd taken it home and stashed it, along with the sad clown and his balloon, in the notebook.

Feeling unreasonably exhilarated, she snatched the notebook back up and flipped to the pocket in the back where she'd stuck the ticket. She nearly resisted thinking it wouldn't be there, but not quite. It was there though. She snatched it out as if she'd found a pearl in her oyster, holding it up to the light as if that was how you identified a winning ticket.

Then her enthusiasm was curbed, but not killed, by the realization that she didn't actually know how to find out if it was a winning ticket.

Another small pep talk.

“Get a grip Merry, it's not rocket science. People with no computer and even no cell phone check their lottery numbers every day. I suppose the winners will be in the paper. But there's no way I'm waiting until my evening paper comes to find out. Duh! Go to the store where you bought the ticket dummy. They're bound to have the information.”

So she did. She walked because it would be just about as fast what with traffic and parking and the lack of vehicular shortcuts. Besides, it was more active and would feel like she was accomplishing something, which she didn't when she drove.

When she entered the store she noticed the digital sign that must have been there along. It hung over the display across from the line of check stands and scrolled the date of the most recent lottery drawing and the winning numbers.

Then it said, “if you have a winning ticket, please do not take it to a checker. Go to the Service Desk for assistance. Thank You and Good Luck!”

“Thanks,” she muttered as she took the ticket out of her zipped-for-safety jacket pocket and waited for the numbers to scroll back around. They scrolled slowly and she checked carefully. Then she did it again.

Sometime later, a voice behind her and over her head said, “yup, looks like you've got a winner there. I checked it with you the last couple times.”

Feeling a little threatened, Meredith took a step back before turning to face the man. He nodded at her and said, “you should take that over to the service desk.”

An hour later she was in her car, driving carefully to the state lottery office. She didn't really remember much after talking to the employee behind the service desk at the store. It was all surreal. How she got home safely was anyone's guess, but she did. Then she sat in her living room staring at the ticket for a while before she felt calm enough to go back out and get in the car.

She had won, won big. Well, big for her. Merry knew that twenty grand wasn't a lot for a lottery win. It wasn't much in today's economy either. It wouldn't even buy her a new car. But to her, it was like being given a gold bar. She could get the computer and phone she'd been wanting and maybe even a handheld digital recorder. She could take one of the writer's retreats she'd been reading about, even one of the expensive ones, though the one she found most attractive was only about four hundred dollars plus travel.

That little bit of luck really was the nudge Meredith had needed. She bought the recorder and started recording her ideas and sometimes expanding on them as soon as they came to her. Then she bought the computer and began to transcribe. But she also went back to her black notebook and opened a new document for every idea in it so, instead of just looking at them and sighing, she could pull one up and work on it whenever she felt like it. Some of them still languished, but she actually managed a couple of poems and one short story, the one about the sad clown.

She took the writer's retreat she'd wanted and it was perfect. She got a lot of writing done, met a diverse group of people from all over the country who shared her interests, and got some tips. She started working tentatively on a novel, unsure if she had the right skills for that length but wanting to try.

On Meredith's computer screen, her cursor hovered over the send button. She reached out and patted the black book, which sat in its usual place of honor on her desk, where it had been replaced when it returned with Meredith from the retreat. That book was her good luck charm and her muse and it always would be, even though she didn't need it anymore. Yes she did. The feeling she got by flipping through the pages and looking at her handwritten notes in all their variety, evoking the day they'd been written as well as the many times she'd revisited them, could not be replaced by a computer and a voice recorder and a new cell phone. They were part of her memories, including those of her first writer's retreat. She still used it. She'd found that some poetry simply needed to be written first in longhand. Besides, it seemed disrespectful to leave her book with blank pages. Blank pages were to be filled with evocative word pictures, philosophies and thoughts to be followed, characters with whom to become acquainted.

The water was rushing faster now, in a direction she couldn't have foreseen. But there was still a bend in the river up ahead and she still didn't know what was there. With a click of the mouse, Meredith Andrews submitted the first of many, many stories.