Today’s blog:  The turning point

I boarded the plane in Reno, NV.

I returned a quick glance and half smile to the flight attendant who asked for my boarding pass.  In just two steps, I found my seat – an end seat on the first row.  I placed my carry-on in the luggage bin overhead, but not before pulling out my writing pad – a $2 college-ruled notebook from K-Mart.

Armed with pen and paper, I sat down – alone.

For the next three hours, I remained planted in seat 1D, lost in another world. There,  I found myself staring into the darkness of night.  I watched as a heavy fog rolled in, making everything difficult to see except for the man in a rowboat.  He sat near the shoreline, waiting.  I couldn’t see his face, but he seemed resigned to wait, as if accustomed to it.  I squinted and strained  to make out another figure moving closer to the water.  It came from between a clearing in the nearby trees.

It approached the man and beckoned to him with a long crooked finger.   Two helots walked alongside while several more circled overhead.  That’s when I knew.  It was the crone!   In a cloak covering her from top to bottom, the man helped her into the rowboat.  The helots stepped back and took flight,  joining the others above them.  She sat at one end, he moved to the other.  The entire time, the man looked down; then faced away from her when seated.  He knew: you dare not look into the eyes of the crone, lest you turn to dust.

He rowed and rowed until land could be seen no more, a rope tied to a raft behind his boat.  Even though I could not see the man’s face, I could see the perspiration drenching his clothes.  It was his only job, rowing that boat – rowing from the shoreline and out to sea, then back again as ordered by the crone.

Through the fog, I saw it.  I saw it and  gasped.  In its element, it was beautiful – majestic; but here, it was pitiful – trapped.  And, like that helpless creature shackled to the raft, the man, too, felt trapped.  He didn’t want to do it.  But, he dared not disobey and watched as the helpless creature struggled to get away.

A single chime, the familiar “ding,” made me look up.  The flight attendant touched my shoulder as she passed,  then took her place in a seat facing the aisle.  The pilot made an announcement over the intercom.  We would be landing soon.  As I closed my notebook and attached my pen to the front cover I kept thinking about the majestic creature struggling to be free.

In fact, I never noticed the flight attendant staring at me.  It was not until she spoke that I realized she had been watching me during the entire  flight.  She was kind and attentive and respectfully asked, “Are you a writer? You never looked up the entire 3 hours. ”

Something inside clicked.

I smiled.  It was an epiphany moment.

I am a writer.   It played out like a scene in my novel…that scene where you can  never turn back, the point of no return.    I liked it.

Everyone experiences that turning point as a writer.  What was yours? How did you react?

Remember, your story matters.

Sunshine and rainbows!

S. Whitten