It all started with a phone call from Kansas City, of all places and with it came a great wind. Not a derecho like the one in Cedar Rapids, of all places, that blew all the trees down and left my poor friend’s garden a wreck.

Nope, it was a great wind blowing east and even though it was a call from Kansas City, of all places, I’m not Dorothy and I didn’t end up in Oz even though I have a small dog that kinda looks like ToTo. No, not Oz but North Carolina, of all places.

It blew me from a house that I lived in for twenty years and though it was a nice house and all and it never gave me a minutes worry and it was surrounded by heron wings and bluebirds and a thousand hummingbirds who about ate me out of house and home and that is just an expression, anyway, I never gave my heart to that perfectly nice home.

Instead, this wind from the west blowing east that all started with that phone call from Kansas City, of all places. It blew me to a little cottage that appeared in my dreams and was mine in a former life if I believed in that sort of thing but maybe I do ’cause I love this house like a mother loves a child or maybe more like a dear old friend that you haven’t seen in years and years and you run into unexpectedly on the street, of all places, and you cry and hug and kiss until you are so filled with gladness that you are satiated with just so much love.

And its all because of that phone call. From Kansas City, of all places, that I am in this magical little cottage in North Carolina, of all places. And

You never know when you pick up that phone

what wind might blow.

\