There are times when inspiration hits me, in the form of a memory, a song, a photo, or a story.  Days after I began writing this book, inspiration struck me.  I had been thinking of someone who had passed away long ago and suddenly knew that my character, Mary, had a memory alike which brings her pain and joy at once.

So I wrote this excerpt with no place to put it.  Logistically it just didn’t fit in the story yet and I didn’t want to force its placement.  It was special to me and worth waiting for the right time and place.  Today as I put my son down for his nap, I sat up in bed letting a sentence or two flow from my fingers in search of inspiration.  Before I had realized it I had found the perfect place for my previously homeless entry.  Things snapped together like pieces of a puzzle.

Lesson learned: if it is meant to be, it will happen.  Even in writing!  As a matter of fact my first chapter was written in a moment of inspiration and was meant to be placed somewhere in the middle of the book, my story had other plans.

Read on for more of Chapter 4!

“Being an only child had not been exactly lonely, thanks to attentive parents and a brood of cousins, however since she was small she had longed for a sibling to share home and life with.  There had been once, when she was around 5 years old that her mother had become pregnant and Mary’s wildest imaginings of sisterdom became a hope within reach.  As her mother progressed in pregnancy she had begun the knitting of the softest green wool blanket that Mary had ever touched.  When it was close to completed mother had started to feel unwell.  She spent days in bed while the midwife, who was a local fisherwoman with a history of delivering babies, hovered around nervously.  Mary stayed constantly nearby, often rubbing the partial woolen blanket between her fingers until she dozed off.  After several days the midwife stopped her nervous tittering and began urgent preparations.  She slipped outside the bedroom door, pulling father away, whispering in low, urgent tones. Mary had been nested comfortably next to her mother and jumped as she felt the sudden weightless rush of being picked up and carried away.  She cried for her mother but the bedroom door closed as the midwife disappeared into the room.  Her father sat still; cradling Mary throughout the evening.  

“Is my baby ok Da?” she remembered asking.

“I hardly know my dear,” he whispered back.  His eyes stayed closed, head tilted to the ceiling in prayer.  

Somewhere around day break Father sat Mary to the side and followed the midwife into the room, Mary trailed behind and for the first time saw her mother utterly depleted.  She was sitting straightbacked against the headboard; a baby in her arms scarcely larger than a kitten.  It’s skin was transparent, slightly blue, and amazingly beautiful.  His light red hair was matted to his tiny head in swirls.  Mary watched his small chest rise twice before he stilled to sleep, never to move again.  Mary had been permitted to hold the baby, both children cradled in their mother’s arms.  She remembered well the delicate little mouth like a rosebud about to bloom.  He was a boy, and as her father had said, was fearfully and wonderfully made.  

Mother had cried and slept and had said little other than quiet reassurances to the babe.  Father chose his name and declared it with both pride and complete desolation; Thomas Leannan Quinn.  Upon the next day neighboring women along with fathers three sisters came to tend to the arrangements.  They had taken the baby from their arms to be properly laid out and mother sat in her rocking chair knitting away at the green blanket.  She finished it within hours and took it to stand over the tiny form arranged on the table and shrouded in scraps of an old shift.  She unwrapped Thomas, and slid the top of her dress down to her waist, pressing the child, cold, to her warm skin.  She sank to her knees and held him there for either seconds or hours, as time had ceased to exist inside the cabin.  She then stood, wrapped Thomas in his new blanket and with an air of completion laid the child down with the tenderness that only a mother may distribute. Mary quietly walked over to her mother, took her hand, and led her back to the rocking chair.  Mother sat and Mary crawled into her lap to weep and to hold onto her most prized possession, her mother.  The two spent the remaining hours of the day locked in embrace, only moving to shift position or to kiss away tears.  These two beings were chosen for each other by God, handpicked to suit one another, and made to love a little boy, who they were not allowed to keep, with the fierceness of their lives.”