The Red Truck of Christmas–Moments that take your breath away…

I wanted to take a moment to share something that happened while writing The Red Truck of Christmas. Sometimes writers (like musicians) experience moments that just happen. They come into being and seem so far beyond our ability to create them that they take on a life of their own. And when it happens, for a moment, it takes your breath away.

Paul Simon once said while he sat at the piano trying to write a song, suddenly the words, “Like a bridge over troubled waters, I will lay me down” came out. He stopped suddenly, and stunned, sat there and began to cry.

There was a moment in writing The Red Truck of Christmas that I experienced something similar. Not to give the story away, but in this short excerpt, the boy (who is the main character) returns after moving away.

“It changed sadly with a note that Mrs. Milner, my adopted grandmother, had passed away. I went home the very next day. I stayed with old Ben until after the funeral and then some. She was the love of his life and they had grown old together. Tired and frail, and now alone, I knew Ben didn’t have much time left. I decided to stay as long as he needed me. Nearly four weeks to the day he passed away in his sleep and I believe with all my heart that I felt her presence in the house that night. She had come to take him home.”

Even though the story of The Red Truck is fictional, I think, sometimes even in fiction, there are moments that are real, even when they’re not. Even now, when I read that passage, I don’t see it as something I wrote, but rather something that existed long before it came to life in my story.

The Red Truck of Christmas has several moments like this one. Maybe the experiences of writing and reading are the same. And maybe that’s the point of it; to experience those moments that inspire us all, that touch our hearts, and maybe, even for a moment, take our breath away.

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