Lately, I’ve been a little obsessed with the idea of the endless number of stories there are in the world, right this very second. Every window in

Creative Commons photo by Djenvert

every house has a story. Every car driving beside me on the highway, every person I glimpse walking in the parkway or standing in line at the grocery store. Every year of history, in every town, in every graveyard.

I’ve always thought about the details that make lives unique, but lately, it’s taken on an obsessive quality that sometimes disconcerts my beloved, especially when he is trapped with me in a long drive at dusk, when I can see into cars and windows. What if you were God, I say to him, and could slip into any of those lives, any time you wanted, see what was going on? And if you were as big as God, wouldn’t that be something you might invent, just to keep yourself entertained? Christopher Robin dubbed this God’s Cable Network, and offered the idea that each of us is a channel.

As writers, we have the opportunity to switch channels a lot, and most of us are so curious we watch as many channels as we possibly can. We’re constantly surfing for new material, stowing away details, opening our eyes wider to find out what else we might discover.

This not only makes for an interesting career, it makes for an interesting life. This weekend, I had a chance to visit Fort Carson which is an enormous Army base at the foot of Cheyenne Mountain. The base has been a background fixture of my life, always present and influencing the world around me, but somehow in 50 years, I’d never actually been on base. My daughter-in-law is active military, however, and she had a baby Saturday (more on that in a minute), so I had to learn how to navigate the gates and find my way to the hospital on my own, even if it was in the middle of the night.

It was intimidating. There are soldiers in uniform, with helmets and guns, at every gate. Most of them are really nice (also approximately twelve), and every single one of them sort of giggled when they asked if my Kia, with its window stickers proclaiming that “Simple Living Saves Lives” was my own personal vehicle.

Despite my practice runs, I did end up getting lost when Morgan of course had to go to the hospital in the middle of the night. In the lonely dark, confused by the exits and loops, I panicked and went to the first gate I saw. Wrong as it turned out. I met the only severe soldier of the lot, who told me to turn around and get to another one.

Anyway. The base is fascinating. FASCINATING, from the rows of signs that say, loyalty, duty, never leave a fallen soldier behind, courage, selfless service, and other things along those lines, to the rows of barracks (each window a life, a story) and the shiny new family housing that looks like a pleasant new suburb. I wondered what it would be like to be a young mother arriving here for the first time. The mountains are beautiful, at least. Would that be a comfort?

At the hospital, there is a row in the parking lot for handicapped parking. Not just three or four spaces, or twelve tucked against the sidewalk for easy access. No. Space after space after space, an entire lot, both sides, marked with fading blue handicapped parking symbols. I was going to count them and felt disheartened, thinking about why there were so many of them.

But you can’t really ignore it. Inside the hospital is a room devoted to Wounded Warrior art. The bulletin boards have numbers to call for wounded warriors and their families. It’s the Army. We’ve been at war for awhile now.

What would that be like, my inner writer wondered? To be the wounded one, the spouse of one, the friend?

In labor and delivery, the nurses are often soldier’s spouses. We had a midwife, competent and wise, who finally delivered a baby who’d been stubborn about making her way into the world. There were lots of women (girls) having babies, lots and lots of them—the floor was efficient and clear-sighted, geared for massive numbers of babies. A veritable factory! I wondered about that, too, what it would be like to be a midwife, to go to work to deliver babies every single day. To participate every single day in that miraculous—or sometimes tragic—but always momentous moment in another person’s life. I wondered what happens if the dad is deployed and the BFF has two babies at home and a deployed husband, too. Lonely, maybe. But maybe a soldier’s wife is tougher than me.

As I was absorbed in the Fort Carson hospital channel, I was also tuning into my own—Morgan’s long labor brought back memories of my own times, one of them birthing the man in the room who tenderly pressed a cold cloth to his wife’s brow. I noted my weariness as it led me down to the cafeteria (is it a canteen here? wondered my writer self) to have an astonishing cup of coffee, where I listened to old men tell stories. I both felt and observed the swift, sharp explosion of awe that swept me when the baby began to make her mewling cries, the intimate recognition that my internal landscape has shifted irrevocably.

As writers, we both watch and experience, and then we transmute all those notes and emotions into stories that then touch others. Detail by gathered detail, we fashion our tales.

Wild, isn’t it?

Have you lately been in a new world or had a powerful new experience? Were you fascinated by some strange landscape? Share it with us, let us tune into your channels for a minute!

Barbara O'Neal has written a number of highly acclaimed novels, including 2010 RITA winner, The Lost Recipe for Happiness and The Secret of Everything. Her latest novel, How to Bake a Perfect Life, released in December 2010, and has been named a Target Club Pick. A complete backlist is available at http://www.barbarasamuel.com/bookshelf
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