The Cat and the Bag

Yesterday I went to the post office and mailed off one of my books. I can't tell who I mailed it to, because it seems like that might be tempting fate or daring God, and because, for the moment, it's nothing more than a book in the mail.

Still, I stood there and watched the mail lady take it and dump it in a big bin behind her, and I thought, That package might change my life.

You know that feeling, when you are standing in a room full of people who look like they are all ordinary people, and you look like you're ordinary, and yet you have a secret no one can know... a secret that is about to change your life.

I felt that way when I first found out I was pregnant and we weren't telling people until we thought it was safe, and so I went around my little world carrying my future inside me and thinking, "Nothing is going to be the same," and yet everyone else thought life was going on as normal.

I felt that way the first time I put a manuscript in the mail for an agent - even for the first time I sent a query. Thinking: this could be it. This could be the one email that changes everything for me.

I feel that way now. Like I am standing on the cusp of something that might be nothing, but might be something. Might be something very, very big. It is somewhere between the less than certainty of a query and the very certain certainty of the baby. It is still a dream, a hope, a wild fluttering in my heart if I think too much. It is possibility. It could change everything in my life. Or it could only change somethings in my life. It could lead to other things. Or it could just be a book in the mail.

But until I know if it is something or not, I have to smile and nod and drink my coffee and wash the dishes and answer emails and vacuum the floors.

Because for now, everything is just the same.

For now.