Excerpts

The
Wonder
of
Ordinary
Magic

a novel

The Story behind the Book

One afternoon while driving down the highway near my home, a large truck suddenly cut me off. I was
thinking about an important change I wanted to make in a book that I was writing at the time and the
thought occurred to me as my car ran up on to the shoulder of the road—what if I get into an accident and
die right now, what will happen to my book? And then I thought, what if I’m just badly injured, say left in a
coma, could I still keep working on the book in my head? Nobody would know of course, but at least I could
finish it! As it turns out, I didn’t die (obviously) and those few scary moments and odd rambling thoughts of
an artist turned writer became the inspiration for The Wonder of Ordinary Magic.

The central character of the book is a Michigan writer named Bobby Weaver who is, indeed, in a coma.
Bobby continues to work on his unfinished novel for us because in his words, “The characters are hanging
around in my head and they’re kind of bugging me. You know what I mean? They won’t shut up. It’s getting
on my nerves. I think they want to know what’s going to happen next.” I understand how Bobby feels. I wasn’
t ready to start another novel when he began to tell me his story. I had just completed a lengthy rewrite of
my first book and I was looking forward to taking a break. Writing a novel can be very consuming, it’s like
you’re hosting a dinner party in your head for the characters 24/7. You’ll be sitting down and watching
television, reading, trying to fall asleep, or driving down the highway, and bam, you suddenly get a
sentence, or a plot twist, or maybe just that single perfect word that you’ve been searching for and you feel
compelled to get it down on paper. Even if you like the characters in your book and have enjoyed meeting
them, there simply comes a time when you just want everyone to go home so that you can clear the table,
sit down, put your feet up and bask in a little peace and quiet!

Like the characters in his unfinished murder mystery, Bobby and his friends and family would not leave me
alone until I gave their voices a home of their own. In the novel, Bobby shares his thoughts about his
current situation, his family, and life in general. His irreverent humorous voice is interwoven with the
viewpoints of six other characters as we move through one day in their busy twenty-first century lives. From
a spirited four-year-old, to a grieving seventy-three-year-old, we are introduced to the people in this young
writer's life, and a spare, bittersweet story unfolds that examines the strengths and frailties of human nature.

At the end of the day, as Bobby puts the finishing touches on his own book, The Wonder of Ordinary
Magic also reaches a poignant and bittersweet conclusion. How Bobby came to be in the coma is revealed
in a haunting scene that briefly blurs the line between possible and impossible, between faith and grief.
And we come to understand that we are bound together by the effortless moments in our lives: the grip of a
newborn baby’s hand, a glimpse of crystal clear blue sky, a sliver of moonlight falling across a bedroom
floor— fleeting moments of ordinary magic and wonder that shine with all the brilliance of a flawless
diamond.

                                                                      Prologue
                                                                         Bobby

      I don’t want to be a writer.
     I want to be a painter.
     I want to stand in front of vast gessoed canvases with handfuls of soft sable paintbrushes that are
dripping with color—bloody reds, icy blues, lush greens, and blazing yellows—and I want to paint.
     Bold. Loud. Screaming-with-color paintings.
     I don’t want to spend my days struggling to find just the right word to string together with a bunch of
other just-the-right words, making choo-choo-train sentences of just the right words that line up across
page after page of plain, old, boring white paper.
     Of course, I don’t want to be in a coma either.
     But I am.
     And, as it turns out, being a writer in a coma leaves me with many more options than being a painter in
a coma would.
     So who am I to complain?

                                                                     Chapter One
                                                                          Bobby

     My little niece, Chloe, came to see me this morning. She’s four. Years old. I like it when Chloe comes to
see me. Much better than when her dad, my brother Tom, comes by. Tom sits in the chair next to my bed
and blathers on and on about how stressed out he is. About how much his boss is riding him at work lately
since they’ve laid off half his department. About how he has to do the work of three people now and won’t
even get his bonus this year.
     Blah, blah, blah.
     He never talked to me this much when I was conscious.
     He even sat there one day and said he kind of envied me. Can you believe that? Shit, I’d trade places
with that asshole in a second. Let him lie here with a rubber hose shoved up him like some pee sucking
snake while being fed liquid slop through a tube in his nose for just one freakin’ day—that would shut him
up.
     Ah, but I digress.
     Chloe. When she was here this morning, she had a pussy willow branch with her. She was bringing it in
to preschool for show-and-tell. She asked me if she could practice the telling part on me. She said that she
could do the showing part all right, but that she was ‘ascared’ to stand in front of the other kids and talk. I
totally get where she’s coming from. I hate public speaking. Flunked speech in high school. Twice. I had
finally just gotten to the point where I could give public readings of my books without that tight, slightly
strangled quality in my voice—and now this.
     Life is funny that way, isn’t it?
     Ha, ha.
     This morning Chloe was standing so close to me I could feel the warmth of her breath on my cheek and
I could smell the Cheerio’s she had had for breakfast. God, I miss cereal. I don’t like Cheerio’s though. I like
Frosted Flakes. And Cocoa Puffs. Sometimes mixed together. I know, I know, that’s a lot of sugar. Sara
used to say that I might as well just pour milk over a bowl of candy bars and be done with it. I actually
thought about doing that once, but I decided that the crunch was essential. That’s what makes cereal
cereal. You know what I mean?
     Anyway, Chloe started to tell me about the pussy willow tree that she got the branch off of. She said
that it grew outside her bedroom window. She said that at first she thought that it was just a regular old tree
with lots of pokey brown sticks, like all the other trees with lots of pokey brown sticks in their backyard. But
one day when she looked out the window she saw that the tree had grown little red bumps all over its
sticks. So she decided she should keep her eye on it. That’s what she actually said, “I decided I should
keep my eye on it, Uncle Bobby”. Can you believe it? She’s only four. Years old. Very precocious. I like to
think she takes after me more than her dad, my lame-o brother.
     So, every morning the first thing she does when she gets up is to look out the window to see what this
tree is up to. And this morning, when she looks out at the tree, she sees that it’s covered with fuzzy gray
pops. That’s what she called them, pops. I happen to know that they are actually called catkins and they
are the male flowers of the pussy willow tree. But I like her word better—pops. Very cool. So she makes her
mom cut a branch off for her and she’s bringing it in to preschool for show-and-tell but she insisted they
stop by here so she could show it to me first. I’d like to think it’s because she loves me so much that she
made her mother do a drive-by visit this morning. But the truth probably is (oh, and by the way, I hate truth,
I always have, it’s annoying, it’s usually sad, it pretty much sucks) as I was saying, Chloe probably wanted
to practice on me first because public speaking in front of coma people is much less intimating than public
speaking in front of non-coma people.
     Think about it.
     You’re standing in front of an auditorium full of people. You’re shaking like a poplar leaf on a windy day,
thinking you’re about to throw up any second and spew your Cocoa Puffs all over the first row, when the
whole audience slumps over, bam—temporary comas. Every freakin’ one of them! You give your speech,
and as soon as you finish they simultaneously blow up like a herd of inflatable life size dolls, their vinyl air-
filled arms flopping back and forth madly as they applaud your brilliant oration.
     Excellent scenario. Don’t you think?
     I don’t mind Chloe coming by and practicing her telling part on me. Whatever her motivation is to come
around is fine by me. I’m glad to be of some use. So anyway, she’s telling me about this amazing tree
outside her bedroom window, and all of a sudden she stops talking and I feel the branch touch the side of
my face. She drags the branch gently across my cheek. The little pops are so soft. I swear I can see them.
All plump and furry like tiny gray kitty paws. The sounds and smells of the hospital fade away. It's like we’ve
been transported to some kind of parallel universe. Like we’re here—but we’re not. I can smell Chloe’s
Cheerio breath and feel those silky pops on my face.
     It’s perfect.
     It’s magic.
     I think for a moment that maybe Chloe is actually an angel. Touching me. Healing me. Or maybe she’s
my little golden haired fairy godmother with a pussy willow wand—granting me my wish.
     My wish.
     What is my wish?
     You probably think you know.
     But you don’t.

Read an excerpt of The Color of My Soul

Lilli Jolgren Day