Jan 7 (edited) • General discussion
My New Chapter 1
I think I mentioned that I was going to rewrite Chapter 1? I was not satisfied with it. Of course, it is good to forge ahead and not keep rewriting chapters, however, in this case I really wanted to do that because I'm starting the book in a completely different direction so if I didn't write this I think I'd get confused.
This isn't very long. It's actually meant to be more like a prologue than a chapter, but readers tend to skip prologues so it's better to label it Chapter 1.
Here is Chapter 1 of my memoir, "Lydia's Lantern." It's actually a prologue in disguise. I've been told that readers often skip the prologue. But they need to read this to understand the rest of the book. I don't think it matters much whether you call this Chapter 1 or a prologue.
After this, I will not be posting any more chapters until I get to the final chapter. I think I might post that one in this group.
So here it is:
The Cat Who Came Back Through the Clouds
I never thought I’d get Lydia back. Not after five years. Not when she had never been mine to begin with.
She was my former housemate’s sister’s cat, a relationship twice removed, the kind that should not leave a mark.
When I bade goodbye to Lydia the last time I visited her, it was an ordinary day in Colorado, the air thin, the light bright, the mountains quietly watching.
As I struggled with my hiking boots, Lydia sat in the foyer, her unseeing, milky-blue eyes turned towards me.
“Lydia,” I said, speaking loud and clear so that, even with her hearing impairment, she might register my voice. “I’m sorry I won’t be able to come see you anymore. I’m leaving for California.”
The puzzled expression never left her face. Her pink nose sniffled.
I reached over and stroked her, blinking back tears. She pressed her head against my open palm.
I straightened myself, and with a final glance back, I closed the door, stepped outside, and made a wish. Not on a star, but on the wind that caressed my face, then let the wish go like a leaf on a stream, one small thought among the countless that crossed my mind as I prepared for my trip.
And now here it was, years later, long after I’d forgotten it, the wish boomeranged its way back to me.
By then, I had moved in with my fiancé, into his small house in Silicon Valley. There, I squeezed myself into a tiny room with just enough space for a table, a chair, and my desktop computer. I checked email daily, Twitter routinely, Facebook rarely. But one afternoon, on a whim, I logged into my Facebook account.
And there it was. A message from Courtney.
I remembered her instantly. The younger sister of my old housemate in Boulder. Pretty, thoughtful, a photographer and psychotherapist in training. And the guardian of a cat I had fallen in love without meaning to, in the way you sometimes do with beings who carry visible scars and invisible resilience. Lydia. I could see in my mind’s eye her matted fur, plumy tail, and her perpetual look of bewilderment.
“Would you like to have Lydia?” the message said.
Courtney wrote that she and her boyfriend were getting serious and moving in together. Despite their best efforts, he was severely allergic to cats, and he simply couldn’t live with one. Thus, she had made the painful decision to rehome Lydia. Several people were eager to adopt the cat, but no one, she said, had been as close to Lydia as I had been. She wanted to ask me first.
I stared at the screen in shock.
It felt as if I’d won a lottery for which I had never bought a ticket.
The wish that I had sent on its wings—a whispered, wistful prayer—was that one day Lydia might become mine. Not through tragedy, not through heartbreak, I specified to the unlistening air, but through some happy turn of events I couldn’t yet imagine.
I had not shaped my desire into affirmations or visualizations. I just let it go. The wish dissolved into the background of all the other things I thought I wanted and didn’t get.
And now the wish was tap-tapping at my digital door, waiting politely for my reply.
A wish I’d nearly forgotten about. How had it ever found me?
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My New Chapter 1
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