Chapter Sample #2 (Autobiography)
   —  by Bob Olson, Ghostwriter

SOUL SEARCHING

December 21^st: After pouring myself a glass of Chateau St. Michele chardonnay, I walked into the living room and put Fleetwood Mac on the stereo. It was Christmas, but I needed something more than The Chipmunks to set the mood. And I didn’t know, or care, where my husband was this evening, because this was going to be Sophia time—my personal moment of soul searching.

I turned off all the lights, plugged in the Christmas tree and sat on the floor in front of it. I had two pine-scented candles burning, which increased the atmosphere since the tree’s aroma had faded more than a week prior. And the shadows that flickered on the ceiling and walls set the mood for some thoughtful reflection.

My girlfriends had invited me to join them for “girls night out,” an opportunity I rarely get as the mother of two, but something deep within me urged me to decline. It was a gut feeling that warned me not to confuse movement with action. Sometimes taking action to change your life means stopping to think about how to improve it. So tonight I was following my intuition to pause and contemplate my life.

Still in my black skirt and white blouse from work, I stared at the Christmas lights and ornaments while rolling locks of my hair between my thumb and forefinger. I took a sip of my wine and thought about what I could do this holiday season that would help me forget my marital problems and stop feeling sorry for myself. After a few minutes, what seemed obvious to me was that this was the season of giving. I thought I should find a way to give to others. By helping those less fortunate, it would help to put my own, lesser problems into perspective.

I considered the toy drives, but that wasn’t doing it for me this year. I wanted to give something different, a gift with deeper meaning for me.

“Perhaps I could give my time at a homeless shelter,” I thought to myself. “Nope, that isn’t right. Not this year.”

The gut feeling inside urged me to think more.

“Ah, I should give away something that I would never consider giving away, something that gives me joy just by owning it.”

Yes, that was it. I knew I was on to something. At that exact moment, I noticed a particular ornament way down low on the tree. I swear it moved, if even just a little, enough at least to reflect some light in my direction and attract my attention. I leaned onto my elbows and knees to observe it closer. It was a tiny ornament in the shape of a book that lay open. On the pages it read, ‘Twas the night before Christmas… I reached out and rested it on my palm, its hook still clutching the branch. That’s when it struck me to give away some of my favorite children’s books to charity.

The one material possession I’ve always treasured is books. I love their musty odor when they get old. I love holding them in my hands like little briefcases of wisdom and fantasy. I love vanishing in their stories when I feel the need to escape. And, most of all, I love reading them to my children and watching their eyes dance with imagination. So I thought to myself, “Why not give these little treasures to people who can really appreciate them?” It felt good. It felt right. And I had shelves of books that were no longer being read to my children.

My four-year-old son, Zac, had a ceiling-to-floor bookcase in his bedroom that was overburdened with neglected books, most of which I had purchased at bookstores, yard sales and scholastic programs. I had books all over the house, but Zac’s room was the most logical place to begin loading my charitable gift bag, as it housed the largest bookshelf of children’s books in our home. So, still clutching my chardonnay, I blew out the candles, turned up the stereo in order to hear it from the bedrooms, then retrieved a chair from the dining room, dragging it across the carpet to Zac’s room and leaving a trail in the living room rug that revealed my destined hiding spot.

Once in Zac’s bedroom, I placed my wineglass on his dresser. It was unusually uncluttered. The entire room was cleaner than it had been in years. But now the room appeared foreign to me. The cleanliness made Zac feel further away. I walked to his bed and messed up the pillows. Then I grabbed one and buried my nose in it. With my eyes shut, I took as deep a breath as possible. Every cell in my body yearned for his presence, yet in a bizarrely calming way. I did it again. Same response. I thought it funny that the smell of a four-year-old tornado-of-a-boy could create such a peaceful feeling. Still, somehow it did. I placed the pillow back down on the bed, messy-like, then turned to look at the books.

I scanned the bookshelf, trying to determine a place to begin. We had a system of taking books we had read and placing them in order, beginning with the left side of the top shelf and working our way to the right and then down to the lower shelves. With one hand on my hip and the other massaging the back of my neck, I stared up at the top of the bookcase. It was high, but that seemed the best place to start. After taking a deep breath, I reached for my glass, took one more sip of wine, swishing it around in my mouth, then placed the glass back on the dresser. It was time to get cracking.

Kicking off my work shoes, I climbed up on the chair to begin pulling books from the top shelf. It was the perfect chair for using as a stepping stool, a solid piece of furniture made of oak with a cushioned seat and a high, spindled back. Even using the chair, I struggled to reach the top books to pull them down. With my left hand on the tall back of the chair for balance, and me on my tiptoes, I stretched my body like a kid stealing cookies so that my right-hand fingers could barely tip the top of the books forward. Not wanting to topple off the chair myself, I let the first couple books—along with some dust—fall to the floor, rather than try to catch them. My face grimaced as I watched them fall, hoping they wouldn’t be damaged as they plummeted toward the chair. To my contentment, they missed the chair and fell flat on the carpeted floor. Too lazy to get down from the chair, I left those books on the floor and reached again for some others. This time, now that the books were no longer jam-packed together, I was able to pull them, one by one, from the shelf.

With each retrieve, I flipped through their pages like I was looking at a book of family photographs. These being children’s books, the pictures flooded my mind with memories of times I’d laid in bed reading to my children. The emotions rose from my gullet to my cranium. My eyes became lakes—my cheeks mountains with rivers. These were happy memories, of course. But the memories then incited a battle within me about which books to donate. It now felt less like I was giving away books and more like I was giving away photo albums of my past. I knew it would be difficult to choose between them.

Despite the difficulty of letting go of these precious books, I was overjoyed by the process of rummaging through them. Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was Songbird playing on the stereo, but suddenly I felt grateful for my life instead of bitter, and I didn’t want the feeling to pass. My evening of soul searching was turning out to be much more successful than I had imagined.

As I stretched for another treasure, breathing in the fragrance of the lower-shelved books pressing against my face, my fingers felt something odd between Curious George and Eloise. It felt like a folded piece of paper, but I was unable to grab hold of it. I stopped reaching and, although still on the chair, leaned away from the bookcase to gain a better view. My brows furrowed in curiosity while my eyes strained to make sense of it. I couldn’t.

Stretching above me again, and making use of my two longest fingers, I barely got hold of the tightly folded paper, a triangular design, and pulled it out from between the books. Once I held it securely, my body relaxed and I sighed in exhaustion. My eyes were transfixed on my find. Everything seemed to go silent. Even the music from the living room stereo was now outside my range. I slowly stepped off the chair in my trance while observing the paper in the palm of my hand. I kneeled on the floor beside the bed like a child praying, my elbows on the bed, my cupped hands cradling the paper.

“What is it?” I wondered. "How old is this?" My mind raced with the possibilities. “Should I be opening this? Is it private? Why is this here?" It didn’t make sense that it would be Zac’s. At the age of four, he was too small to have reached the top shelf. “Perhaps it had fallen out of a book,” I surmised. I decided that I had to examine it.

Hesitantly, I carefully unfolded each crease of the triangle; wondering, perhaps, if there was something enclosed in the paper, maybe a butterfly or pressed flower. The first unfold revealed nothing. I caught my breath and looked around the room for support as if someone might be watching. Then I gently opened the next fold, and then the next, finally unveiling some handwriting in blue pen ink. The penmanship looked familiar. It was Genevieve’s—my eleven-year-old daughter. No longer hesitant, I quickly opened the mystery in its entirety. That’s when I saw it: “Dear Santa.” Gen had written a letter to Santa Claus.

My first thought was that I felt sorry that I hadn’t found it the year she wrote it. Then, realizing there was nothing I could do about the past, I thought about how cute it was. “I hope she got what she wanted,” I joked with myself. “She probably did since she always tells me what she wants for Christmas,” was my afterthought. I started to feel giddy as I scanned the letter. “I have to take time for soul searching more often.” Then, at that precise second, my smile took a hairpin turn. Right there before me in the second paragraph was the word “Tumbleweed,” a single word that gave new meaning to the moment—the letter was written for this year’s Christmas!

Initially, my mind rejected the twist of fate. “No, it can’t be,” was my response. Then, gradually, I sank in the quicksand of reality, unable to free myself as it crept into my consciousness. My hands began to tremble. My upper lip followed suit. I couldn’t believe I had stumbled upon this letter. I looked up at the bookshelf, taking in its height. I looked back at the letter, which was now quivering in synchronization with my limbs. I folded my legs and placed it on my lap to stop the movement and read it in its entirety.

Gen’s letter to Santa stated that she was embarrassed to still believe in him. She wanted to believe, but the kids at school teased her about it. They said Santa didn’t exist. She wanted to find out for herself. So she was writing this letter and hiding it way up high in her little brother’s bookshelf—a place nobody would ever look. This way, if Santa found it, she would know that he exists.

Genevieve also added two requests. First, she wanted to know if her hamster, Tumbleweed, was okay. She had given Tumbleweed to another home and needed to be sure he was happy. She had been worried about him ever since giving the pet away, but didn’t feel she could burden her mother with her trivial concerns, especially since Mom was so unhappy in her marriage. And, second, Gen wanted a baby doll. She felt selfish asking for something for herself, and even thought she was too old to be playing with dolls. But that was what she was asking for anyway.

We had only given Tumbleweed away a few weeks prior. That’s how I knew the letter was recent. Gen likely placed it on her brother’s shelf before leaving for Wyoming the previous Saturday. I couldn’t figure out how she got the letter onto the top shelf. She would have had to drag the dining room chair into Zac’s bedroom, just as I did, without anyone noticing. But that fact, alone, was sad evidence that Gen wasn’t being noticed. Sadder still, she knew it too, which is likely why she risked doing it without fear of being seen.

By the time I finished reading Gen’s letter to Santa, my mascara was mud. I wish I could say that this was a happy moment, but it was more accurately a humbling moment. I had always been the person Gen had come to with her problems. Now she was seeking comfort for her worries about Santa’s true existence and Tumbleweed’s happiness from someone else—someone who she wasn’t even sure was real. I wasn’t upset just for my sake. Although what mother doesn’t want to be needed by her children forever? I was more disturbed that Gen didn’t feel she could come to me; or worse, Gen tried to come to me and I didn’t notice. In fact, the ultimate slap in the face was that I knew the latter was more likely the case.

The simple words of a young girl had unveiled a world of truth, truth that I didn’t necessarily want to consider. The sorrow and bitterness of our everyday family existence, due to the slow yet inevitable demise of my marriage, suddenly popped through to the surface. I wondered how often I had failed to be there when my children needed me simply because I was so focused on my own misery. I knew it happened more often than it should have. And now, due to all my subliminal signals that screamed “Don’t burden me with more problems that I can’t handle,” my own daughter felt selfish asking for a simple doll from Santa.

With tears racing down my face, I half-slid, half-crawled over to the dresser. Reaching up, I picked up my glass and swilled the remaining drops of wine as if they might contain the anecdote to my dilemma. They didn’t. Staring at the empty glass, I sobbed like I was looking into a crystal ball of my past. Like an unexpected gift, this accidental discovery had me thinking about all that was going on in our lives and how my personal issues were affecting Gen and Zac. I thought about my mothering skills… or more truthfully, my lack of skill at mothering. And all at once, as if showering off the shadow of denial, I was reflecting back on the many times Gen was telling me she needed something from me but I didn’t hear her cries. Now, thanks to her letter, I was soaking in them with the sting of instant clarity. Talk about soul searching.