A Huge welcome!
We want to begin this edition by welcoming our latest new subscribers! As a reminder, everything here from us on Substack is provided free of charge without a subscription fee. That is how we have always done things because we appreciate our fans. Your feedback, encouragement, and support are truly priceless! Remember that you can read back through previous newsletters too!
A Huge Change!
Later this month, my work schedule will be changing to where I will be working 3 days a week instead of 5 days a week. I guess you could say that I’m going to be 2/5 of the way to retirement!
My chickens and I are looking forward to the change. Since they all retired from laying eggs this spring, they have been urging me on to joining them in their retirement years. More time for fun and treats and playing outside! (At least, that is how they look at it!)
You can be sure that I will be spending more time with them, but I will also be spending more time writing and drawing! That is how I have envisioned my retirement years once I started blogging “My Life with Gracie.”
The only downside to that vision is that Gracie won’t be physically here to enjoy those retirement years with me. But this week, I remembered Amelia and saw how she has stepped in to fill Gracie’s place as my muse, and she hasn’t done it alone. Bessie and Pearl have been helping me along as well!
Huge Final Two Chapters!
As we pick up this week’s reading, I’m reminded that so many readers had speculated about whatever became of The Bottle Cap Lady after Pearl gave her such a special Christmas gift. (And new subscribers might seem lost!) This next chapter reveals how even someone like an old Bottle Cap Lady can have a happy ending they never expected! But she isn’t the only one!
You may want to brush up on what you know about her and another character, Big Willie, before moving to this edition’s chapter.
In Chapter 27, we were introduced to Amelia’s favorite person in the bizarre world of Professor Accipiter’s Circus, Big Willie.
https://graciepress.substack.com/p/amelias-favorite-person-in-the-circus
In Chapter28, we learned about how Pearl enjoyed her first visit with The Bottle Cap Lady.
https://graciepress.substack.com/p/when-being-curious-is-simply-right
In Chapter 34, Pearl learns about letters to Santa and what everyone needs to do to make sure Santa visits their home. She also learns about giving gifts and want to give a gift to The Bottle Cap Lady since likely no one else would.
https://graciepress.substack.com/p/two-heroes-and-two-chances-of-failure
In Chapter 36, we saw Pearl’s persistence in doing only what she could do to give The Bottle Cap Lady a special Christmas gift. We also learned the reason behind The Bottle Cap Lady’s odd behavior and isolation.
In Chapter 37, we found out how Amelia’s rescue plan included giving Big Willie a chance for freedom and a new life.
https://graciepress.substack.com/p/amelia-the-plan-and-freedom
And in Chapter 41, we learn what Amelia’s big friend did with his new life and freedom along with what Pearl’s new friend did after receiving her own simple, everyday miracle!
It was an early spring morning when we heard hammering out at the street. I looked, the chickens looked, and we saw The Bottle Cap Lady tacking up a home-made poster onto the light pole by our driveway. It was the same one that The Jump Rope girls used when playing at night.
I went to the street to take a look at it and to find out more of anything that I could.
“Good morning, Mr. Nate, young Sir,” said The Bottle Cap Lady. “I’m just using this light pole in your yard to put up this poster. I sure hope you don’t mind. It’s just that kids like playing in this spot.”
She pointed with her crooked finger to the words “Ringmaster Willie presents” and as she read them aloud, her finger moved across them, tapping each syllable.
“Ringmaster Willie presents
The Most Curiously Amazing Birds
Anywhere in the Entire World.”
“That’s my boy. My own sweet boy, and he has found his way back home. He don’t know much except how to eat and how to love them birds and other wild things of his.
“He says he knows you in a round-about sort of way through a friend you both have. Her name is Amelia.”
“There is a stage in my backyard that I built, Miss Theodora. Maybe you remember it. He is welcome to have it to use for his shows, and Amelia will help demonstrate everything he needs to know to make it work. Hopefully, another friend of ours that you know in a round-about sort of way will help him too.
“Her name is Pearl, and she loves to perform. She told me your name, Miss Theodora. Neither the chickens nor I will ever call you The Bottle Cap Lady again. Thank you for teaching Pearl about The Promise of Christmas.”
“And thank you for your Pearl teaching me about The Promise of Easter. It really does feel like Love is making all things new for my Willie and me and all those birds he brought here with him.
“We are going to use up all those old Christmas decorations in my yard for him to go on the road with his own Big Willie’s Bird Circus, and I get to make all the cookies and muffins to sell. He said I could, but no Bird Pie. He said that too.
“My boy speaks so good now, and he told me his friend Amelia even taught him to tie his shoes.
“Them is the things that got him put away in that state home—not speaking good and not knowing simple things like tying his shoes. That place turned him into a runaway.
“That Amelia must be a good and patient teacher—and a real daredevil too,” Miss Theodora said. Then, pointing to the sign in the flowerbed to the left of the front porch, she read aloud, pointing to the words with her finger in the air as if touching them to make them more real.
“Home of Amelia,
the only chicken to ever
fly to the Moon and back.”
“Would you like to meet her?”
“I would indeed!”
“Well, why don’t you bring your son over and the two of them can have a little reunion while you meet our Amelia.”
“The strangest thing happened one morning,” said Miss Theodora. “It was soon after the new year had started. Some birds woke me up with their chirping at my window, and they seemed to be singing ‘Go meet a kind stranger at The Chicken Place Restaurant who needs your help,’
“What could I do besides start looking for a kind stranger? And there in the middle of the parking lot was this man named Willie, pushing a cart with some chickens and pigeons and a few ducks and other bird on top.
“We got to talking, and he said he had nowhere to live. He slept under the cart with a blanket, and the chickens and pigeons slept under the covering of the cart that made a kind of tent over them.
“He said he was looking to start a circus of his own because he had helped to rescue the chickens from a horrible circus, but he had spent years there with no one to rescue him from that place until your Amelia came along. He showed me the scars on his back that were made by the man who owned that evil circus. And so, I brought him in to my house.
“He said he had never had a real family with a Momma, and I told him I had never had a real grown-up child. We have been working on him building his own circus with pretty decorations and everything.
“We are going to start small and local without a lot of traveling around because his birds are getting on in years just like me. And he really does need a home, and I really do need a child to take care of.
“He told me his name is Willy, and I noticed one of his chickens looks a lot like that one there of yours,” she said, pointing to Amelia. “He calls his one Mayflower. She’s not the only chicken he’s got. His favorite is the one he named Peggy, and her heart is devoted to him, and his heart to her.
“I can never thank you enough for sending over your little white hen, the one you call Pearl, this past Christmas season. She is a real sweetheart too.”
“Pearl has so appreciated having you for a new friend,” I said, “She even thinks meeting you gave her what she calls ‘a simple, everyday miracle.’
“She is very talented on a stage, and I’m sure she would absolutely love to be one of Willie’s special guest star performers. She got a new hat for Christmas and can’t wait to wear it in a show.
“Gracie and Bessie will be glad to know their old friend Mayflower is living right next door. More than anything, I am sure everyone here—and especially Amelia—will be glad to see how the pieces of this puzzle have all fit together into such a big, happy plan for everyone, especially you, Miss Theodora. Seeing your smile, it looks like you too received your own simple, everyday miracle.”
Our morning sky had been speckless, just as speckless as the day Amelia set off on her grand adventure. In truth, she did not feel it was a grand adventure at all. It was simply something she had to do. She had no choice.
I was feeling that as well ever since My Uncle’s ultimatums.
While the others played and scratched and pecked, Amelia came and sat at my feet. She had always seemed to prefer my company than that of any of the other chickens.
“Did you see the speckless sky this morning, Amelia?”
“I study the sky each morning. It tells me what to expect for the day.”
“There was another morning with a speckless sky like today. It was when you flew away to see if you could be lost and not afraid. I remember every detail of that sky on that adventurous morning.
We both looked up and examined the wispy clouds that had appeared, just as Amelia knew they would.
“Tell me again about the speckless sky, Amelia. I want to feel like I am flying with you. I would like to see it through your eyes.”
I closed my eyes, and she began as she had many times before.
“The sky was as speckless as an empty sheet of paper, an empty crystalline blue sheet of paper, still waiting to be drawn or written upon. Only that sheet was endless, and it was mine. I could do whatever I wanted with it or nothing at all. That was the choice I had been given.”
“But you could not fly the way you had hoped to fly that day, could you?”
“No, not that day. Not until you taught Emily to draw. She did not understand things like how she could see the moon from our garden, but someone on the moon could not see our flowers. It was a mystery to both of us, but I am great at solving mysteries!
“And she believed what you had told her about how drawing lets us do things we could never do any other way. For those of us who are chickens, believing is better than understanding, especially wanting to fly. No bird tries to understand how flying happens, they simply take a leap of faith and believe.”
“Tell me about flying with your Map Of The World,” I said.
Even though I did not open my eyes to check and see, I knew she had closed her eyes as well. And so, she began to tell me, just as she had done many times before when I had asked.
“I soared along the dotted lines and plunged down on the double lines.
“I banked into the solid lines and climbed upon the dash-ed lines,
“So way up high beyond the earth to where there were no lines at all.”
She said all this with a rhythm that pressed onward, just as she must have when she flew.
“And then what, Amelia?”
“I rushed past the global winds and cried out for all the world to hear, ‘This is happiness!’
“Oyster boats and fishing piers, peanut fields and cotton fields, then fields and fields and fields with corn as far as any eyes could see,
“Along the rugged, ragged coast, up to the Arctic tundra bare, to where the snowy owls hunt.
“I felt that love was carrying me to trace the rivers to the sea, to plunge into the fiords deep, to make a mark for all to see upon that sheet of speckless blue.
“Then onward to the islands broad, above their mountains topped with snow, and down below the only speck, an eagle wishing he was me.”
“And what else, Amelia?”
“I may have wing-flapped once or twice, but that was only just to steer. At last, I found the place that no one else had ever been.”
“And what about your map, Amelia? Your Map of the World, Amelia?” I asked her. “The map that only you could make?”
“I flew beyond my treasured map, the special map that I had made, beyond its borders, off the page, no longer sure of where I was.
“Beyond the lines and markings there, I soared without a single care, and felt at last that I was lost, as simply lost as lost could be.”
“But you weren’t afraid, were you?”
”Fear had no place within my heart,” she said.
With that, I felt our journey ending as we glided back to earth.
“And tell me why, Amelia.”
“It does not matter where or how far away I go, as long as I am loved, I am never truly lost,” she said. “As long as I am loved, I will always know where I am. I will be in your heart and in Emily’s heart, just as we—all of us—are in the heart of Forever.”
We both sat silently until, at last, her memories and my imaginings landed together.
“Thank you, Amelia. Can you help me with the answer to a question that has puzzled me?”
“Of course.”
“You had promised Emily in your old home that if you two were separated that you would find her, no matter what. But then you left her to find out if you could be lost and not afraid.
“It seems like that was not keeping your promise to her. Is somehow a puzzling action like that something that fits in with special chicken rules for love and friendship?
“I am wondering because I have made promises that I need to keep. Uncle Buddy wants to get rid of all you chickens.”
I thought Amelia understood that I was talking about not be able to keep my promises to her when I had told her that this was her home for as long as she wanted it to be and how I would never give her away and never keep her from leaving. But Amelia had a completely different promise in mind.
“Emily!” called Amelia as she headed to the garage, “We need you to help us with a new drawing!” Then Amelia looked up at me and said, “We need a large piece of drawing paper from the garage, one that will cover this garden gate that you used in the past for a stage, not the new stage you built for ballet dancing and Pearl’s Comedy Coop. It needs to be the stage that they first used when Gracie and Lefty danced together. Gracie always felt that gate under the lowest limb of the Healing Tree was magical.”
Emily and I hurried to the garage and met Amelia there. After I unlocked the door, Amelia said with great urgency, “Emily, get your drawing supplies.”
“You need them! It is a speckless sky day, the very best day for a faraway adventure! And your drawing will let us do something we could never do any other way. Nate and Gracie have promises they need to keep—and we are all going to Paris with them and watch them do just that!”
At last, the conclusion to this amazing adventure is to be usher in through Amelia and Emily working together! It’s why they were adopted into The Garden, why they found their special gifts when separated, and why Nate and Gracie will fulfill their promises to each other…
“One day when you are dancing on the grandest stage in all of Paris, I hope you’ll remember that your first stage was my shoe.”
Gracie stood on her tiny toes and nodded as if to promise that she would.
Before leaving, and should I also mention the concluding volume will also tell why The Absence of Love will no longer have a place in their world?!?
Until Next Time
If you have any comments—good or bad—please share them.
Our Best Advice for the Days Ahead: Think about the people whose lives have crossed paths with your own. Think of who you can help. The person you help will likely help another! Like Pearl and Amelia, you can be the start of something great that will touch more lives than you can ever imagine and sometimes things simply fall into place to create more and more simple, everyday miracles! And while you’re thinking, look for a Speckless sky!
We will be sending a “Bonus Newsletter” to let you know as soon as Volume One: Into the Garden is available in print!
Next week, we will have something new to share for a day with a Speckless sky when anything is possible!
Thank you for reading!
John, Gracie, Bessie, Blanche, Pearl, Emily, and Amelia
Bravo! Your language, characterization and world building always impress me. Very gently spoken, but at the same time, making everything perfectly clear.
It was a nice touch making Willy the absent son of the Bottle Cap Lady. Loose ends tied up.
(BTW: I told you before that you need to firmly decide on the spelling of his name and keep it consistent, either 'Willy" or "Willie". This isn't just me: I'm sure if you had submitted this to a mainstream publishing house, a copy editor would have told you the same thing.)
Likewise. I appreciate anyone online who knows I exist.