August 10. This is an important date in my novel.  It’s the date of the “inciting incident”, as they call it in craft workshops: the action that sets the story going. In my book, a woman who can’t have a baby finds an infant alone in a shopping cart in a superstore and step by slow step, walks her out of the store.

I chose August 10 not only because I needed the timeline to be summer, but because the date has significance to our family. It’s the day my husband’s mother was born–weirdly, coincidentally, two of her three siblings were also born on this date, years apart. I’m guessing the day nine months prior–November 10–must have held some sort of meaning for my husbands grandparents, but whatever it was, that story is lost. And yet, a vestige of it survives here in a medium they couldn’t begin to imagine.)

So–Happy Birthday to my husband’s late mother, who was also named Helen K. Ross–another weird coincidence from the space/time continuum.