It is the second Wednesday of the odd month and I am meeting with my library book club to discuss yet another memoir.

This one is a best-seller about a divorced woman who spends a year of her life trotting around the globe in search of comfort, God, and a soulmate.

To discover any one of these things in a lifetime is, in my opinion, nothing short of a miracle.

Somehow I’ve even managed to misplace all three of these things in only five years, nothing less than a disaster.

And a small percentage of my friends have pocketed all three prizes without even venturing outside of a twenty-mile radius.

I struggled with the book.

My fellow readers in the club bask in the book’s meaning, revel in the book’s soul-searching, wonder at the book’s significance.

What is wrong with me?

The writing in this memoir is wrapped like a work of Cristo in words of silk, ribboned with magic, and tagged with passion.

So why can’t I find the present inside?

Wait a minute.

Why do I even need a gift?

I’m sitting here in a warm cafe on a wintry evening, writing this piece, there’s an outside chance that the waiter is my soulmate, and God is waving me over from the next table.

Maybe the March book selection will be less of a mystery.

Copyright 2009