Utah Petroglyph
I think some beginnings are only recognized in retrospect. You’ll be amazed at what you’ll be doing, the voice in my head told me. It’s not even on your radar. I’d been pondering my up-coming retirement and heard this not once, but many times – usually when meditation had cleared my mind of clutter.
When my sisters visited me in 2008, I read them a short fictional piece I’d written about inheriting the family desk. That was it – one page. I made a few revisions and put it away. Later I wrote another short story of an ancient woman obsessed with horrific visions of the future who died holding an acorn to her breast. In one of those “ah-hah!” leaps, I knew this would be the acorn/oak tree from which the desk would be made.
Family women who wrote on the desk started lining up, starting with my activist Great Grandmother who farmed California’s north central valley after the 1849 Gold Rush, and ending with a present time woman struggling with how to live on a degraded earth. I thought that was it until the “visitation” one night from the future – Amisha, my great-granddaughter.
The mystery held within the family desk currently encompasses three women and the future. I hope that’s it! With my ending already in place (see my December 7 post), I have only to cross the desert to bridge the beginning with the ending (my next post). As I look back, the beginning of “The Desk” did sneak in under my radar, but now it’s an integral part of my life. And yes, I am amazed!
(Note: “The Desk” was the former working title for “Heart Wood” before 2020)
© All materials copyright Shirley DicKard, 2012 – 2013, except as otherwise noted.
Shirley DicKard 