My new friend Kerry Egan spends her days with dying people, listening and talking. Those conversations come with her job as a hospice chaplain, but the way her eyes come alive when she talks about what she has learned shows that it’s also a calling.

My mom rocked me when I was little, holding me close. She sang sometimes, the rails of the rocker creaking in calming rhythm. One nursery ballad told of the unlikely courtship of a frog and mouse. It sounded fairytale-like, though looking back now it seems more like a portent.

Sometimes people who know about my past writing will ask, “Are you working on something now?” People might run into me at Indah or Drip--local coffee hangouts--my laptop open, and wonder.