Well, it must've been the coffee or the prolonged nap or the fact it's a Friday night, but I reached my quota with relative ease. Either that, or I'm beginning to feel what it's like to be Adele. So many things about her are contrary to my personality. I can't imagine being a stoic, responsible lady. Perhaps "stoic" isn't the appropriate word. "Unaffected" is better suited. And I can't say "I can't imagine...," because--obviously--I can and have. Not that what I imagine is at all true to life, but one must do the best one can. And so her character becomes a learning mechanism for me, because I'm compelled to explore what passion must be like for the actual unaffected, responsible ladies of the world. Surely, love was not an ordered, predictable thing, like opening a bank account or purchasing a vehicle. There is always a divine catalyst, and this catalyst is never, ever clean. (Sure, the context may be. But the burst-into-creation? A creative process--no matter the mode or medium--is never clean.) ~~~~~ When I consider my maternal family line, one descriptor presents itself: "scandal." (And--to be perfectly clear--this is not to implicate any particular generation. God forbid the reading public get the impression I incriminate anyone close to me. This is--dear reader--FICTION.) As a writer, I romanticize the stories and legends, but as a descendant, I take a very empathetic, somber, and realist perspective. History would like for us to believe most families graduated from one generation to the next with very few skeletons in the closet. But I suggest the opposite! What family does not have a few skeletons in the closet? Which brings me to my next potential purpose, one on which I've gnawed for the full week I've endeared this pretty little plot. I had to ask myself, What is it about the Rosalind women that sets them apart? Why are they important? Why is their story one which should be heard? What significance can this line of women hold for any other woman? My answer to myself: They are normal women who have faced exceptional challenges in exceptional contexts. Yet, the "exceptional" is really quite "normal." And the proof of the theory? If any reader follows the stories of these characters and for even a moment thinks, Why yes, That is my experience. Or, Why yes, that is my mother's life. Or, Why yes, that is what I've always been told about my grandmother. If the theory fails and the humble readership can in no way fathom much less relate to these characters, then at least the story will possess some vintage-flavor, Jerry-Springer-type shock value. And I guess I can live with that, knowing that my family is unique in at least one more way. "Live creatively."