Author Marjorie Holmes once said, “At Christmas, all roads lead home.” And so it was that last week Cathy and I set out to spend a week in our native southeastern Illinois, albeit not without a bit of last-minute drama.

The night before we were to leave, I heard a loud noise, the kind of noise that required investigation. At our house, the usual culprits are our cats, Stanley and Stella, but this time they appeared to be completely innocent. In fact, Cathy and I could find nothing amiss, so we went off to bed not knowing when we woke in the morning what we’d discover.

Our walk-in closet has those wire shelves affixed to the walls. You guessed it. The eight-foot-long shelf on Cathy’s side of the closet had come out of the wall and fallen. Talk about an unexpected mess! It was indeed a day unlike any other day, the exact starting point for a narrative. A common strategy is to open with the habitual (“It was Lee’s habit to soak in a hot bath each evening before bed. He’d submerge himself up to his chin and nearly doze off, letting the warm water soothe him.”) and then switch to the unusual (“On this night, though, a loud noise jarred him.”). Because of the extraordinary noise, we have a narrative underway.

I tried to make light of the occurrence by saying to Cathy, “I’ve been searching for another Christmas gift for you. I guess I just found it.”

We couldn’t do much about the closet since we were leaving for Illinois, but we did manage to call Closets by Design, and we’ll be meeting with one of their representatives tomorrow. Stay tuned for the resolution.

*

Once in Illinois, I went for a run on the treadmill in the hotel fitness center. We were staying in a small town, and our choices for lodging were small. We ended up in a newish Best Western that had a pool and this fitness center with its one treadmill, and elliptical, a couple stationary bikes, and some free weights. I was a little over a mile into my run when power to the treadmill shut off, leaving me to lurch forward and catch myself with my hands. An extraordinary event? Not really since the treadmill had done the same thing to me on two prior visits. Each time, I’d complained, and management had told me they’d make sure the treadmill was fixed. That never happened, so I can’t say I was surprised when the power shutdown happened again.

A young woman, though, who was also staying at the hotel, couldn’t say the same. The next morning, when I got to the fitness center, I could see her keycard on the ledge of the treadmill and her water bottle in the cup holder. She was pacing about, looking flustered. I asked her if she’d been on the treadmill, and she told me she’d been having a good run and then the power had gone off and, as she said, she’d almost eaten it, which I took to mean she’d almost fallen. This being the first time she’d experienced the treadmill, she found herself amid something extraordinary, something that demanded narration.

To help resolve the situation, I talked to the front desk clerk. She and the manager reviewed footage from the security camera in the fitness center to confirm the fact that the treadmill had nearly bucked the girl onto her face. The next morning (again, I was on the bike because the treadmill now had an OUT OF ORDER sign on it), the owner of the hotel stopped by to tell me he was getting a new treadmill.

*

Then there’s the story of the headstone Cathy and I saw in the city cemetery. The stone bore the names and the birth and death dates of two women. One of the women was identified as the wife of Dr. C. Moore. The inscription at the bottom of the stone said, Pals in life, together forever. Three graves down, we found a stone for two men. One of them was Dr. Christian Moore. Go figure. Yet one more example of a story pushed along by the unexpected, the lifeblood of a good tale. Happy holidays, everyone!