Crestfallen.
That’s what I was when I dropped
off my books at the Decatur Book Festival and asked about that evening’s event
at the Emory Schwartz Center.
A woman behind the check-in table
peered over her glasses at me. “The
tickets for that event have been gone for weeks.”
I didn’t even know there were tickets.
Evidently, area bookstores had given out the free tickets and being from out of town, I
didn’t know.
While trudging back to the car,
an idea came to me.
I told my friend Marni who had
invited me to the festival, “Let’s just go over to Emory tonight and
see if anyone has turned tickets in. Who knows?”
So, we had a plan. I felt better.
Except when we left her house
that evening, we smelled gas which we at first tried to ignore, but then knew
we had to call the gas company. We waited an hour. It turned out all right, but we were greatly
delayed.
When we arrived at the venue
close to the event hour, a crowd of folks surged in front of us all waving the
requisite tickets. Will Call had no tickets, so our only option was talking to
those who took the tickets at the door. Nothing.
“But wait here,” the woman in the
festival tee shirt said. “Maybe we’ll get a couple.”
So we did as the minutes ticked
by.
Then one ticket came in.
And finally at almost 8:00, another.
I could have skipped down the aisle.
We took our seats for the program, which was a tribute to Pat Conroy.
Several notable authors made presentations including Pat Conroy’s wife
and his daughter Cassandra and Melissa, James Dickey’s daughter, Bronwen, as
well as Ron Rash.
But the person I had
most wanted to see and hear for a very long time was Pulitzer Prize winning
author Rick Bragg.
And finally, after many years I
did.
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I’d thought a lot about what I
might say to him and decided on this, “Rick Bragg, I love you and I love your writing, but I love
your Mama more. She’s my hero.”
I reflected a bit about her
extraordinary sacrificial love in this POST.
At first he seemed a little taken
aback, and then laughed and said, “You and several other people feel that way.”
He told me they were writing a cookbook
together and that she had not been very happy about the process. She never used
a recipe, so I can’t wait to read it.
I said,“Make sure you tell your mama what a
woman from Georgia said.”
He laughed and agreed.
When I cracked open my book back
at home to see what he’d written, I read, “To Beverly . . . who gets it. Rick
Bragg.”
Now, he may sign every other book
that way, I don’t know. But the truth is, I do get it.
If it hadn’t been for a woman who
didn’t buy a new dress for eighteen years so she could support her family, I
don’t believe he’d been signing any books that evening, and we’d never had
opportunity to hear what his brilliant mind produced.
If there’s a Mama’s Hall of Fame,
no doubt that woman who loves Jesus is in it.
Now, the next person I want to
meet is Mama Bragg. She might get so famous after the cookbook comes out, though, I’ll never have
opportunity.
But I’m not too worried.
On some distant day
in another place, I believe we’ll run into each other.
"No one’s ever seen or heard anything like this, Never so much as imagined anything quite like it— What God has arranged for those who love him" (I Corinthians 2:9 The Message).