The Irony of Arrival
Adventure always knocks when you're in the middle of cooking a complicated dish and about to burn the sauce. You wipe your hands hurriedly on an old towel, not caring if you stain it ruby red, because she won't knock again for another five years. You fling open the door, expectant, slightly afraid, pull her into your arms, and remember to keep breathing. She is awake, alive, and always slightly trembling.
You can seek her out, but her face will never be the same if she doesn't come to you herself. The last time I saw her, she was asleep on a lawn, under a tarp on a rainy Tennessee morning in April, and she didn't care that her socks and jeans were wet. She ignored the sound of the coyotes calling, and she only half listened to me, her mind already careening towards the future.
—Jacqueline Hesse
