Childhood Journals
College Years
Fighting Depression
After the Voice
| Sometime in 2007
The new fountain roared beside the round café tables as she sat alone trying to write. The addition to the mall was glorious, full of gleaming marble and chestnut colored wood. The table was modern—a shiny silver trumpet, tulip top down, balancing a small, round, black granite slab—sturdy and well made. Everything about the place resonated, a back beat of quality and expense, the fountain in the center pounding out the rhythm. The massive skylight undulated above her, diffusing the blaring sunlight into a blue-white glow that filled the cavernous plaza. Boutiques ringed the fountain, the shopping spots of reckless spenders and the overly rich. At her little table on the edge of the falling water, she thought about her book, a dark drama about a desperate woman's search for wholeness. The rarefied air of the commercial center soothed her. The story in her book was tortuous, a painful journey through abuse and mental illness, homelessness and heartache. The sharp contrast between her story and her surroundings grounded her in a hopeful reality, a playground for the accomplished, the whole. Her protagonist adopted a gentile air, a dignity and grace usually afforded only to the elite. How little, in comparison, did her suffering really matter? What beauty and elegance exists in the world, available to anyone able to sit by a fountain with a pen.
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