Friday, November 25, 2011

New Chapters

Chapters in many of my favorite books end with cliffhangers.

The police kick down the door and rush in.
She opens the mailbox to find, not the bills she expected, but a note from him!
The pirates tie the blindfold over his eyes and push him onto the plank, as the cabin boy throws off his mask and shouts, "Not so fast!"

End of chapter.
I'm supposed to put down the book and go clean my room.

But in my life, chapters don't end with cliffhangers, they begin with them.

My parents decide we will be moving to Morocco right after my 16th birthday.
The doctors grab my newborn baby and rush out of the room.
My husband calls from jail in tears to ask me to bail him out.

And a new chapter begins.

New chapters often look dire at the beginning. As Louis L'Amour once said, "An adventure is just something you wish wasn't happening to you." And as my mom used to say about the U-Haul motto, An Adventure in Moving, "Who wants their move to be an adventure? I want our moves to be as unadventurous and straight forward as possible!"

This from someone who once bought a mini-van from a mail-order catalog, had it delivered to a dock in Amsterdam, and drove with her husband and 6 kids through Europe to Morocco to set up house.

Very unadventurous. ;)

Today I find myself, once again, at a chapter opening.

I open an innocent-looking email to find a copy of the employment termination notice for my ex-husband.

I have no idea what this new chapter will bring. Pirates and damsels in distress? Or resourceful maids and happy endings?

Let the chapter begin.