The Gatherer

While she wanted to think she was a born writer, in reality she was a gatherer of people. As a child she’d gather friends on weekends to build circuses or act out plays in her grandparents’ backyard. Later, when she had to go away to the church orphanage, her room was where the other girls would come to do their homework and talk about their secret desires to meet boys. (They only got to see them at the Wednesday night prayer meeting and the Sunday morning worship service so the rest of the week their imaginations would run wild.) When she was old enough to get a job and live on her own, women friends from the coffee shop would come over every Saturday night, bringing bottles of cheap wine and platters of cheese and crackers. And then one day she got up enough courage to go to a workshop on writing and found her true calling: gathering women to write their stories.