The Amazon Prime van usually stops in my cul-de-sac as least once a day. Since Christmas the number of packages arriving at my house has gone down to a trickle, so I don’t pay much attention to what direction the delivery person goes after exiting the vehicle. One day last week, my husband carried in a package on his way in from work. I looked at Alexa for a notification and started trying to remember if I had ordered anything because I really am on a spending moratorium; plus my husband does not shop online. Much to my surprise it was a gift from my sister. She sent me a copy of a book she told me about a while back. She was going to lend me hers when she was finished but decided I needed my own copy. She gifted me Storycatchers by Christina Baldwin. As I started reading the Preface, I knew this was a special book – one I would be savoring again and again.

These are some of the nuggets I have pulled from what I have read so far.

• “Story is the narrative thread of our experience – not what literally happens, but what we make out of what happens, what we tell each other and what we remember.”
• “Yet the question remains, what stories will we save? And the question arises, what stories might save us?”-
• “The self-story is the narrative voice in the stream of consciousness that runs babbling along the edge of our awareness. Minute by minute this narrative defines who we are and what we are capable, or not capable, of doing.” 

Each chapter includes memoir examples, writing quotes, and prompts. I could be lost in this book for a long time!

So as if one surprise wasn’t enough, yesterday another package arrived via Amazon. This time it was a lovely little book called A Book of Delights by Ross Gay. It was a wonderful gift from my daughter who heard about it on a podcast and thought I would like it. I do! The book is a collection of the daily delights that Ross Gay found and wrote about everyday for a year. I have decided that this will be my “upstairs” book and live on my night table, so I can be delighted in the morning as well as before I go to bed. It’s not a book I want to read straight through in one or two sittings. I want to enjoy and think about my own daily delights.

I am so thankful to have both a sister and a daughter who know me so well and are so generous. Those two acts of kindness made my Easter break even more special. I hope to pay my good fortune forward in the future.