Patience, my dear, patience

   
 This meme showed up on facebook a day or so ago. For anybody who writes it certainly rings true. It reminded me of an event in my own life.
     Some years ago I was walking with a woman friend in downtown Anchorage. This was in the days of the Book Cache of Fifth Avenue, I believe. We passed the book store's window and stopped for a moment. It was dedicated to a single book and I recall saying in a low under-confident voice, "someday I am going to have that window."
    Her response was less than enthusiastic. I don't recall her saying anything, just giving me a "yeah-sure" glance.
     Four years later I walked past that same window, alone this time. And guess what: the only book in that window was one I wrote.
     A few years later I was walking by the same window: same book, different woman. As we
stopped to look at it a fellow we knew walked up. He asked what we were looking at. "Tim's book," she said.
In a challenging tone he demanded to know what I had to do with that book. "He wrote it," she said. The surprised expression on his face looked more like an insult than an compliment, but …
… sometimes the medicine does work.