Cheryl-Anne Millsap

In the photograph, I am in bed. It is early morning and I have just been surprised with breakfast on a tray. My hair is tangled, my face still looks sleepy. A child – the bearer of the tray – sits beside me.

I’m a little homesick. I shouldn’t be. I haven’t been anywhere for months. Other than a weekend or two out of town last winter, I’ve been right here. I go to sleep in my own bed and wake up to make breakfast, feed the pets, back out of the garage and head to work. The next day, I do it all over again.

Walking the dogs down the sidewalk in the dark, I didn’t see him at first. The man standing at the edge of the park was almost invisible, blending so well into the scenery I didn’t notice him until we were close enough to touch.

She caught the bus at the bottom of the hill. Clutching her purse, she stepped up, paid her fare and moved stiffly toward the empty seat beside me. We chatted as we watched the city – the schools, the hospitals and the houses – roll by.

The busy sound of the birds outside, matched by the loud chittering of my daughter’s parakeets upstairs, wakes me. I open my eyes and notice the fingers of light slipping into my room, pulling at the edges of the blinds on the windows. I turn over, look at the clock, and groan. It’s not even 5 a.m. Some mornings I can’t fight it. I bury my face in the pillow. Chances are, I only got into bed a few hours before, seduced by the long day into staying up too late, dawdling, eating a late supper, watering plants on the patio and watching the cats play outside at twilight, walking the dogs as the moon rose. Chances are I wrote too late into the night, or put in a movie when I should have called it a day. I might have spent too much time at the computer answering e-mails or shopping online.

The sound of the crash woke me. My window was open, and I'm a light sleeper – it doesn't take a lot. I jumped up and looked out to see a car smashed into the rear of another car parked on the street, and I watched a young man – swearing mightily – run down the street, jump in another car and speed away.

I stepped out into the backyard, closing the door behind me, and pulled a chair out into the center of the small lawn. Curled in the chair, my arms wrapped around my knees for warmth, I tipped my head back and stared up at the stars. They were just where I expected them to be.

I have a friend who has a new baby boy. Lucky friend. Lucky boy. Shopping for a gift for the new baby was fun. But then it's always fun to shop for baby gifts. Who can resist tiny gowns, soft booties and snuggly blankets?

I remember exactly where I was when I clipped my own wings. I was 27 years old, proudly holding my beautiful 3-week-old baby – my first child – in my arms. I walked up to the door of a hospital room to visit a friend of the family who had just delivered her first child.

Imagine we are at a party (let's make it a cocktail party because I've got a new dress and I'd like a chance to wear it even if it's only in my imagination) and we're making small talk, chatting the way strangers do. And imagine that I told you that one day I decided I wanted to be a pilot.

I stepped up onto the treadmill. I would walk, not run, for three miles and not one bit more. That was as far as I was willing to go. And because I have to do something to keep me from constantly monitoring my progress – how many miles, how may calories I've burned and how hard my heart is working – I gazed out of the window that overlooked the Monroe Street Bridge.

In January of 1999 I started looking into Spokane. Not just at the material included in the relocation packet that arrived in the mail. Not just into the stories I found in the newspaper or on the television.

It was a small thing, really. I'd met a goal. I'd made something happen. I felt good about myself.

My grandfather was a good man. He worked hard, more than 40 years in the steel mills of the Deep South. He pulled long shifts, double shifts and overtime. He was a man with many interests, but not a lot of formal education. The Second World War and then a family to support may have interrupted his education, but he knew how to learn whatever it was he wanted to know.

I was away at a conference at a small town in North Carolina, just at the edge of the Smoky Mountains. It was an achingly beautiful autumn day. A low mist hung over the trees and the air was crisp and sweet. Oaks and sugar maples were ablaze. It had rained earlier so everything was wet, and the colors were clear and strong.