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Y'all take care now | page 1, 2, 3
I have looked at the quote every day and I happened to remember it as we flew back and forth over Jackson, with lightning crashing all around, so I only begged a little to land safely. This is true. I felt unnaturally calm, for me. I kept saying to God, "Thy will, not mine, be done" -- and about half meaning it. I hummed little hymns and grimaced with burlesque worry at the other passengers, and listened for panic in the pilot's updates over the PA system, and for the screams of the flight attendants, and not hearing either, I sat and tried to breathe deeply. And it was while breathing, and beaming away, that it came to me that I was supposed to get started on a novel. It was clear as a bell, as if there was a voice mail message playing inside of me. I was not hearing God's voice, per se. I mean, the voice I heard did not sound like Burl Ives, or Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Rather, I heard a voice that had no sound. And I said, "Well, for goodness sake." Then, awhile later, "Well, then -- great." This is exactly what I said when I understood 10 years ago that God's will for me was to have the baby I was barely pregnant with. I'd prayed for knowledge of God's will, and I got my answer. And it has indeed been great, albeit hard sometimes, and weird. I think writing a new novel will be great too, or at least, great-ish. And hard, and weird. So I took some notes for a new book that I've had in mind, and we circled above Jackson, and then right before we would have had to turn back to Memphis, we were given permission to land. It was 678 degrees when we landed, at 10:30 at night. Fast forward: I had a thick Southern accent by noon the next day. I was being driven around by this nice caseworker named Mark, whom the conference had assigned to show me Jackson and to take me to a book-signing and attend to my needs and make sure no one tried to get me to like grits, which people in the South are always trying to do -- like you've just never had the right grits. Like theirs more closely resemble actual food. So in the course of driving around listening to Delta blues and avoiding grits, my caseworker asked what I wanted to do that afternoon, and at first I said I felt like taking a nap. Then I changed my mind: I found myself saying that it was my 13th sobriety birthday and maybe he'd help me find someone newly sober, with whom I could celebrate my birthday. He said that there was a mental hospital nearby that had a drug and alcohol ward and that maybe I could rustle up an alkie or two there. A mental hospital; in Jackson, in July? But then I heard the voice with no sound inside, and it said I should go do exactly this. Which is how I ended up in a psychiatric hospital in Jackson. It was 95 outside, and perhaps 35 degrees inside -- freezing. You could hang meat in that waiting room. In the strong Southern accent I now sported, I asked the receptionist if there were any alcoholics or addicts around who might need to spend time with someone who'd managed to stay sober for a number of years, and she said, Yes, in fact, there was. And that is how I happened to spend the afternoon of my 13th birthday with a handsome black man of 30 or so named Jonathan. | ||
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