Isabella’s gaze fell on the window as she pulled away from me. “It’s snowing, Mommy!”
“Are you going to go play in it?” I asked her.
“I already had a snowball fight with Craig and Mommy Lindsey.”
“Craig’s here?” My heart skipped a beat. “Where?”
My father exchanged a worried look with my nurse. Confusion overtook me when Craig brought my hand to his lips and kissed it. “I’m right here, baby.”
Before I could ask where he had come from, the ceiling rolled back on both sides like a great scroll, giving me a clear view into another realm. A wall, made of what appeared to be a perfect sheet of opal, opened. From within, I heard music so beautiful and joyous that it brought tears to my eyes.
I didn’t know if it was the morphine, the cancer, or God Himself behind this vision, nor did I care. It was magnificent.
Everyone I loved was gathered at my side as though attending my funeral. I wanted to ask them if they saw the vision too and tell them not to look so somber, but my gaze would not move from the scene above me. My eyes were fixed upward and my mouth lay parted in awe.
Out of this glimmering gate emerged a woman who looked like a more beautiful version of myself. She wore a gown of finely spun lavender silk and a radiant smile. My mother was no longer the sickly, pitiful creature of my last recollection, but far more lovely than she had ever been in her youth.
My heart filled with joy, then sadness, as I realized that it was almost time to join her.
“Are you ready?” she asked me.
Almost.
The music faded. My mother closed her eyes and lifted her face toward a blazing white light above her.
Unable to withstand the brilliance of it, I turned to the handsome blond kneeling at my side. “Let’s dance in the snow,” I said.
His eyebrows shot up in surprise. “You can’t even stand.”
“Carry me.”
“Baby, it’s cold. You’ll—”
“What, catch my death?”
“Jenny,” my father said. I expected him to lecture me about needing my rest. Instead, he surprised me with “Have fun.”
Craig looked at me, unsure.
My grandmother coughed. “Oh, for pity’s sake, the woman’s dying. Craig Allen, if you don’t dance with my granddaughter, I’m going to flick your forehead good.”
“Make hay while the sun’s still shining,” I said.
He smiled through tears.
Lindsey and my nurse swaddled me inside a thick comforter. Craig waited for them to finish before scooping me from the bed into his strong arms. Strangely, for the first time in weeks, I felt no pain, just an uncanny sense of euphoria. I laid my head on his chest as he carried me outside. Though I tried to inhale his wonderful scent one last time, it was not him that I smelled, but the sweet fragrance of incense.
Craig carried me into the cold outdoors. Inches of powder coated the ground and tree branches as fat white flakes continued to flutter down over us.
Soft and cold, they hit my face, then melted. I felt something glide across my neck. I reached up and felt my engagement ring still hanging by its chain. I touched it, searching Craig’s face. “I thought I gave this back to you.”
Such sadness brewed in his stormy hazel eyes. I prayed that it was just passing through and would not take up residence there. He deserved to be happy. I laid my hand on his cheek. “I love you.”
With great effort, I unlatched the necklace from my neck, slid off the engagement ring, and held it out to him. “I don’t want it to be buried with me. It isn’t mine. . . .”
He leaned his forehead against mine. Foggy white puffed from his mouth in quick, hot breaths against my lips. “It is, baby.”
When I felt tears trying to form, I let out a deep breath to ward them off. I slid the ring and chain into the breast pocket of his coat. “It belongs to a woman who will love you almost as much as I do.”
“There’s not going to be anyone else.” He nuzzled his nose into my hair. “You’re the love of my life.”
“The love of your life
so far
. She’s out there, but you won’t be able to give yourself to her if you’re engaged to a dead woman.”
His eyes glistened as he hummed softly in my ear, twirling me this way and that. I smiled at him and he grinned back. His blond lashes turned white before my eyes.
Watching us from my bedroom window were the delighted faces of those I loved most in the world. Isabella was among them, held up by her new mother. Using my last bit of strength, I waggled my fingers at them and they waved back.
“It’s time now, Jenny,” I heard my mother say.
When I looked up, it was not her looming before me, but a Man who was far more than a man. The closer I drew to Him, the more familiar He seemed. He gathered me into His arms and uttered beautiful, unspeakable things to my soul. Warmth and joy, so perfect and complete, overwhelmed me.
As He held me, I realized that all along, it was He my heart had longed for—not David and not even Craig. I was getting ready to ask if He was the one who had whispered to me in the wind and in my dreams, but He answered before I could utter the question.
I Am.
A blanket of peace fell over me as I tucked my mother’s notebook into the desk drawer and peered through the window at lavender tulips reaching heavenward through a dusting of snow.
Today marked the official start of spring, but like a lingering guest, Old Man Winter refused to believe the party was really over. Nonetheless, channel six assured me it would be seventy degrees by noon. Listening to the chickadees caroling outside my office window as an orange orb rose in the blue sky, I felt confident in their prediction.
This promise of life renewed brought a smile to my lips . . . that and finally finishing my mother’s journal.
Reading it had affected me more deeply than I ever could have dreamed. My normally happy-go-lucky disposition hibernated as I became engulfed in my mother’s melancholy musings. My husband, Ben, worried that I was sinking into depression, but I assured him it was her tears, not my own, streaming down my cheeks as I turned the pages. He no more understood that than why I’d been so compelled to finally read the notebooks I had carried with me for so long.
I explained to him that there was something about becoming a mother myself that fed the sudden desire to understand her.
Twisting a ringlet of hair around my finger, I wondered if she knew that I had grown up to be a teacher and married a man who loved me the way she always hoped David would love her. Or if she knew I was about to deliver her first grandchild, and that if she truly was a girl as the ultrasound promised, I would name her Genevieve Peg Wilkinson.
I picked up my mother’s opal ring, fingering the delicate prongs holding the stone in place. After today, it would be tucked safely away with the rest of my memories of her, hidden from the little hands that would soon be born.
A curl of steam tickled my lip as I leaned in to sip chamomile from my mug. Through paned glass, I watched a robin poke its tiny gray head from a birdhouse hanging from our powder-coated willow.
Yes, spring was definitely here despite winter’s vain attempt to hang on. The snow would be melted within the hour, unlikely to return until December. I wondered if the dogwood I planted last year would bloom. I wondered a lot of things as I sat there. Would I have been able to do for my child what my mother had done for me? Would I face my own death with the grace with which she faced hers?
I set the cup down and lifted open the window. Crisp air greeted me just as the phone rang.
A familiar string of numbers flashed on the caller ID. I picked up. “Hey, Mom.” A twinge of guilt pricked at me as it always did when I called Lindsey
Mom
, but I recognized the false accusation for what it was and dismissed it. After all, the woman had raised me to adulthood. She’d earned the title through and through.
“How’s Dad?” I asked, forcing myself to at least sound interested. My mother had been right about him. David had never become the father either of us had hoped he would be. Indifferent and moody, he cared more about numbers adding up than he had pushing me on a swing. But Lindsey loved him completely, and what he lacked in the parenting department, she had more than made up for.
Between Uncle Craig and his wife, Cowpa, Uncle Ted, and my late great-grandmother Mama Peg, I had never wanted for love or attention.
“His back is bothering him again,” she said.
I tried to concentrate on the rest of the conversation, but my mind drifted off to the Noah’s ark wallpaper border I still needed to add to the nursery. After a period of perhaps seconds, possibly minutes, I heard my name and it jostled me back to the conversation.
“You’re doing it again, Bella.”
“I was listening.”
“Isabella Rose.”
“Don’t say my name like that.”
She laughed. “Then don’t give me cause to. So did you finally finish her journal?”
“Yes,” I said. “Just before you called.”
“I imagine it was bittersweet.” I detected a tinge of jealousy in her tone. I appreciated that she tried to hide it, but being a mother-to-be myself, I understood. Though Lindsey had raised me from the age of six and was the woman I loved most in the world, she had never been Mommy. That role was reserved for the woman who bore, cradled, and nursed me—Genevieve Paige Lucas. My mother.
When Lindsey and I finally said good-bye, I hung up and glanced out the window at the same lake I had tried to cross all those years ago. Beside it grew three apple trees, one planted by my grandmother, one by Mama Peg, and the other by my mother before she died. One day, there would be a fourth.
But not just yet. I rubbed my growing belly. I had a few streams to ford in my lifetime before I could even think about crossing an ocean.
Gina Holmes began her career in 1998, penning articles and short stories. In 2005 she founded the influential literary blog Novel Journey. She holds degrees in science and nursing and currently resides with her husband and children in southern Virginia. To learn more about her, visit
www.ginaholmes.com
or
www.noveljourney.blogspot.com
.
A Conversation with the Author
Your blog,
www.noveljourney.blogspot.com
, grew out of your own journey to become a published author. How many books had you written before
Crossing Oceans
? How long has your “novel journey” taken?
Thanks for mentioning Novel Journey. It has been a labor of love, not just for me but for the whole Novel Journey team. It’s a great place for readers to discover new authors and for writers to connect and learn. And unlike most things in life, it’s a completely free resource. It really is the Novel Journey team’s desire to spread the word about the tremendous choices and talent available today in the realm of Christian fiction, so forgive us if we unashamedly plug it. We’d love the whole world to discover the great Christian novelists there are to choose from—Francine Rivers, Charles Martin, Lisa Samson, Claudia Mair Burney, Frank Peretti, and on and on.
But to answer the question you
actually
asked, I’ve written four books that haven’t been published before this one,
Crossing Oceans
, was contracted.
I’ve been writing toward the goal of publication for something like ten years. I’ve had lots of rejections and near misses along the way, but I’m so grateful for all of it.
Crossing Oceans
is my best piece of writing to date and a story I’m so very proud to debut with.
How did the idea for
Crossing Oceans
come to you?
I’m not exactly sure where the idea came from, but when I write, I’m usually working out something in my personal life, past or present. Often it’s not until the story is done that I figure out exactly what. I think with
Crossing Oceans
, it probably was my relationship with my parents. They divorced when I was a baby. For the first years of my life, I was with my mother, and then when I was in second grade, I went to live with my father. I know what it’s like to be torn, like Isabella, between two families who don’t always like each other but who all love the child they share. Then again, maybe I wasn’t working out anything! Maybe I just fell asleep watching something about a dying mother and woke up thinking I had a brilliant idea.
How much of Jenny did you draw from yourself?
Friends could probably be more objective in answering this question than I am. The honest answer would be maybe a little, maybe a lot. Each of the characters is drawn from parts of me, the good guys and the bad. I’ve got enough attributes and flaws to go around! Mostly the characters are their own creations, though. They borrow a little from me, a little from others, and take on their own personas as well. It’s a combination.
Probably the one who’s most based on myself is Bella. She’s the glue that brings the two families together. I’ve always been a mediator type of person. I think most middle children probably are. However, I was more like Eeyore as a child than Isabella’s sunshiny self.
All of your as-yet-unpublished novels were written in a completely different genre—thriller/suspense.
Crossing Oceans
is quite a departure. Do you prefer or find your voice more easily in one or the other?
I grew up reading suspense, so naturally that’s what I thought I should write. I did okay with it and got some recognition in a contest and came close to getting contracted, but ultimately none of those suspense novels ever sold. Then I started reading some really amazing novels outside the suspense genre, and it was like another world opened up to me. It was no longer a thriller I longed to write, but a story that would change lives the way the books I read had changed mine. When I started
Crossing Oceans
, I presented it along with a suspense novel I was working on to my agent, Chip MacGregor. I asked which one he thought suited me better. He told me both were good, but that
Crossing Oceans
seemed more like my true voice, or something to that effect. It turned out to be a turning point and absolutely the right advice. I’m now writing what comes naturally and absolutely loving it. Chip’s a genius.