I like to think my inner being reflects to the outer world a karma-peace-live-and-let-live-balanced-yoga sort of persona —  all ZenMama.

Then I look in the mirror and I see Veruka Salt.

She’s the obnoxious kid in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory who goes around screaming, “Give it to me! I want it now!”

Because I have a writer’s outlook on life, I tend to think all stories should have a beginning, a middle and an end – preferably one that has something worthwhile to say.  So when life doesn’t always write itself the way I think it should be written, I want to jump in and play editor.

I forget that the central character isn’t necessarily me, the book may not be written in my voice. That what I want now might just end up slashed from the pages by the true writer’s pen. I forget that I can create the cast in my imagination and assign the character flaws and the neuroses and the dramas . . . but I have absolutely no idea how closely my art imitates someone else’s reality.

So, no happy birthday and I’m being all, this book is supposed to be my memoir and it’s not following my outline about it when the truth, actually, is this:

I got the golden ticket.  And I got to visit the Chocolate Factory.  I went, if only for the blink of an eye, where childhood dreams and adult imagination blend, where fantasy and reality merge to produce a magical, whimsical place you truly wish you could stay.  I got  the gift of a lifetime, savored the Wonka bar, the fizzy pop,  and an everlasting gobstopper too.  How many people can say that?

Veruka wanted it all and wanted it now and she landed herself a very brief chapter and a disappointing ending.

Charlie recognized that we each create our own reality and we sometimes look at things from completely different perspectives and it isn’t about just you and it doesn’t matter what you want. He bathed in the now and appreciated every precious second, and then he let life flow.  And ultimately, he got to live in the Chocolate Factory forever.

A story with no ending remains at its climax.

Let it be.