jwjourney.com

I, like most writers – and even non-writers – dream of one day penning a book of my own. This is a large sea of people, and not necessary a desirous bunch. Those who actually float to the surface and produce a book…well, those are the heroes. Maybe one day I will be one. For now, I am plagued by writing assignments that pay the bills. To be writing again, even if it isn’t some brilliant prose, is fabulous enough for me.

Like most other author wannabes, I am constantly building characters in the people I know or the people I meet. Or in even those I don’t meet but have the pleasure of knowing - unbeknownst to them - through things I overhear or happen to see.

And it was this – my nonexistent book characters – that I was dwelling on when I was having lunch with my darling 5- (or at this time, soon-to-be-5) year-old son at one of his favorite restaurants, Moe’s….affectionately known by my son as “Welcome to Moe’s." We had goofed off all day because what’s the point of trying to do anything educational with my son when his preschool is doing a far better job of it? And what better way to cap off a lazy day than with cheese dip and chips? It was later than we usually eat - 12:30 - and the crowd was larger and noisier. We managed to find a booth, where I ate my sensible Close Talker salad with no shell and my son had a cheese quesadilla and cheese dip and for once I successfully willed myself not to devour his chips and dip. He was telling me about  his dream – having his feet sucked by a giant jellyfish. This woke him up in the wee hours and had him holding his feet up for fear the jellyfish was still (still?) in his sheets. I suspect Spongebob is to blame for this nightmare. But he stops his chattering (he does this well and I can only think he got it from me) to, as my husband would say, make sweet love to the queso dip. That’s when I heard the first strange thing from the table behind me. 

“The last time I felt this way, the person was dead 24 hours later.” So I had to tune in because….well, I'm reading Scarpetta (when I have time) and I love a good Forensic Files. Anyway, this woman – let’s call her May - tells her lunch companion – she can be June – that she called her mother in a panic that morning because she had this “feeling.” That same feeling that resulting in the death of not one but two different people. She says first it was her soon-to-be mother-in-law. She was in the throws of a divorce and one morning the very minute she was driving past her MIL’s place of work, she thinks, “where would I sit at her funeral?” She said it was more than a slight wondering. Kind of a powerful, overwhelming thought that hung in her mind as she continued to drive to work. May says a couple hours later she gets a phone call at work from a friend saying that May's MIL was driving to her job and had a heart attack or something and veered off the road – I think May said into someone’s yard – and wrecked her car. She was dead. And by May’s calculations it happened about the very time May had driven past MIL’s place of work and had that crazy premonition.

Usually, my son talks my ear off, so I have to give full credit to Welcome to Moe's cheese dip for occupying my son. That, and whatever sports was showing on TV. Anyway, May continues to say that the second time this feeling struck her was one early morning. She jolted awake with tears streaking down her face and the most incredible feeling of sadness that she could not pinpoint. Just then - like in some freaky horror movie - the phone rings and it was a friend from her office informing her that a coworker had died that night before. 

After this story June tries to intervene. If I were a betting woman – and I am not much of one – I’d say that June was trying hard to end the conversation pretty quickly and find something a little less surreal to discuss. But May didn't get the hint. June says, “Wow. How about that. So, this was before your divorce? Do you still talk to him?” But May sort of slides past that comment back to the freaky death feeling stories and goes on to say that she had this “feeling” about her mother like last night or this morning. May says she called her mother that morning and her mother said she wasn’t feeling well, but… But. 

I never got a look at May or June’s face. A shame, because I'll probably never know if May's mum made it through the day.