ANNOUNCEMENT

Hello Again.....I have come to a decision that was not easy to make. I am temporarily stopping the novel blog and resuming the questions blog. I won't necessarily be posting every week, but I will post when the spirit moves me, when I feel that I have something to say. 

I think that life has to be about challenging yourself and growing through that challenge, but sometimes it is also about honestly acknowledging our strengths and weaknesses. I was not writing the novel that I hoped to write. I was not entirely proud of what I was putting out there and that made me reluctant to continue the story. Perhaps, someday, Sarah and Miriam will call me back. Perhaps, their story will shape itself in my head as I lead my life, and I will be motivated to resume their tale. Or not. Maybe their story is not the story I need to write.

In the meantime, I will continue to post my thoughts and queries, my dreams and observations, to the question blog. I hope that I have not disappointed anyone; though, I can't help feeling a bit disappointed in myself. When I was young, I started out writing fiction and loving the appeal of creating worlds from words on paper. Then, life taught me to value truth and honesty because without them, nothing else is real. Today, I'm realizing that memoir feels like the genre that best suits me. When I write about the books I'm reading, the dreams I have, the food I create or the people I know...I am embracing and chronicling a life lived. For now...that feels like what I am supposed to be doing.

Please stay tuned for a new post from this blog soon. As you may have noticed, I tweaked the title a bit.

Thanks to all of my faithful bleaders for taking this circuitous journey with me.

-Rachel

Chapter Eighteen

The unthinkable happened last night and I m still trying to come to terms with what it means.
At about three in the morning my cell phone rang and jarred me out of a deep sleep. In the order in which they flooded my brain, here are the disastrous options that I imagined:
              1. Something wrong with mom
              2. Something wrong with Abby or Ian or their kids
              3. Rara
             
Happily, this particular disaster did not affect any of the above. Lightening struck the bakery. By the time the fire crew arrived on the scene, so much damage had been done that the firefighters focused mainly on keeping the fire from spreading to any of the surrounding structures.

One of the benefits of living in a small suburb of a large city is that everyone knows you. Bill Adams, the local Fire Captain, called me as soon as he got the call. As I was driving over to the shop to meet them, I was trying to stay optimistic. After all, it was raining buckets, so how could a fire rage amidst all of that water? Sadly, I learned that it can. Sarah's Sweet Cakes was fully ablaze when I pulled up onto the side street. The air smelled like burnt sugar...but maybe I'm imagining that. I didn't even realize that I was crying until Bill handed me a tissue. Within the next hour, the proprietors of the neighboring businesses arrived to survey the damage. I called Abby and she came to wait with me. After the last flame had been extinguished, the firefighters went in to assess the damage. I tried to join them but they said that the foundation had not yet been secured.

Abby held my hand as we waited for the first report. When Bill approached us, the expression on his face said everything. "I'm really going to miss those red velvet cupcakes with my afternoon tea, Sarah. But you'll rebuild. You're young. This is just gonna be a bump in the road."

Abby squeezed my hand tightly. "No one was injured. Your insurance is up-to-date. We'll help you figure this out. I promise."

Just then, a very familiar looking yellow bug pulled into the parking spot next to Abby's car. Rara jumped out of the driver's side door just as Miriam bolted out of the passenger side. The two elderly women raced towards Sarah, and Miriam got there first. Both women were dressed oddly as if they had layered clothes over their nightgowns rather than starting from scratch and getting dressed. Sarah was enormously grateful to see them.

"We came as soon as Abby called and told us," Miriam said. "Rara offered to drive since my night vision is getting worse..We just threw jackets on over our night clothes....We look atrocious...Hopefully, we won't run into anyone we know. Oh never mind about all that, what the hell happened?"

"Mom," Abby chimed in. "Breathe. This was an Act of God...totally unpredictable and unpreventable."


"Must we really bring God into it?" Rara asked. "Things happen. Do we have to  hang blame on some faceless deity in order to make sense of it?"

The three other women just stared at her blankly. "If you think this is the time to engage in one of your spiritual debates about the cosmos, you are even wackier than I think you are!" As Miriam spoke her hands were shaking slightly at her side.

"Oh shit," said Rara. "You're right. Its the middle of the night and I'm frankly spooked by all of this. Besides, the older I get, the weirder I am without my coffee!"

She walked over to Sarah and put her arms around her. "C'mon baby girl. We will fix this. We are strong, capable women and we can rise above this whole lightening fire mess thing. In fact, knowing us, we will have you back up and running way before anyone has time to miss their little baby bundt cakes."

Sarah looked at Rara and then at Abby and finally at Miriam, and something became startlingly clear to her. "I love you all. So much. You have been there for my ups and my downs and my in betweens. But, I'm going to take this as a sign. Maybe from God. Maybe from the cosmos. Maybe from something else...or nothing at all. Sitting here, watching this lovely business I've created burn to the ground, I've made a decision. I'm not re-building...I'm reinventing."