A THEORY OF EXPANDED LOVE = a big Catholic family 1963 in Pasadena. Chapter 7 is set on a warm California night at an enormous event: dinner. Clashing are the noisy and urgent desires of each child in a sprawling group of sixteen. Everyone is famished. And then, there’s the guest. Who represents everything. God, Church, Community, Family. Everyone vying for his attention and approval. Pre-dinner hunger permeating the visceral experience of more than fifteen bodies, a baby with a dirty diaper in the play pen, and the smoking barbeque outside. 

And then, decades later, my brother brings me back to that haunting event. 

Before Gramma Ester was Gramma, when she was just a little six- year-old girl, in first grade, she had a crush on a family friend named Walter Gaulke (who was 13 years older). She carried this secret hope in her heart for almost two decades before she could have the moment with her sweetheart that she wished for all her life. And yet that moment quickly passed, and their story was lived and told, as you’ll hear in today’s podcast. 

I ached for them, and for the nearby ultimate loss I anticipated feeling when they died. But I brushed it aside, because it wasn’t my issue right then. Far from it: we were on opposite trajectories and I was so excited about mine: getting ready to go into the world!

What is it about this story? The benign nature of the tanning salon? The casual event of some man walking in the front door? The front-desk training, Be friendly, smile at the customers?  

What was so haunting?The kindness on her beautiful face? Or was it the closeness of his face right up against the cash machine?

It was 1995. It happened in our suburban backyard. We had just met Melanie Carpenter on the worst day of her life. Images and stories of her were all over the news.

She was beautiful and she was missing, and we couldn't get enough. We prayed to anyone who would listen: Please, please let her be alive!

Sharky died on the same day the pope died, and two days after Terri Schaivo was finally allowed to.

Even though, as the Dalai Lama says, we all suffer and are going to die someday, there never seems to be a good day to die.

As we slid him out of a shoe box into a hastily-dug hole out in the daisy garden under a dark sky and a pelting spring rain, I imagined that runty bag of cat bones drifting along in Bardo-land with the souls of Pope John Paul II and Terri Shaivo.  How evolved were those three souls? Would they be searching for a couple in love into whose embrace they would be born again?

And out of his comfortable life. It happens in an instant.

A deafening clap assaults his ears. It takes a second, but George rallies. He can see he's the only one who has stepped into the intersection, so he must be the one. He puts his other foot forward. 

In 1983, I left my husband, my home, my friends, my family and my country to live with my lover, an artist from Toronto. In the months while waiting for his divorce to come through, we produced a show there, the first Canadian production of LETTERS HOME, by Rose Leiman Goldemberg. It was the story of Sylvia Plath's life from 1950 to 1963, when she committed suicide. 

In this production, I performed the role of Sylvia, who was 31 when she died. A week after the show closed at The Adelaide Court Theatre in Toronto, Ted Hughes, Sylvia's husband at the time of her death, now the Poet Laureate of England, was the guest of honour at the 5th International Festival of Authors at Harbourfront. At this event, with hundreds of fans in line to get his autograph, I am somehow sitting next to him.

How did it happen, after this spectacular coincidence, that Ted Hughes, in an auditorium full of fans, wrote a poem for me on the back of a ticket? This is the story of that night. Of that meeting. Of that poem.

This story features Zoe, a 'spark plug' who works with her father at a used car dealership near Niagara Falls. On this fateful day, Lenny comes to the lot to buy a jalopy. Lenny and Zoe are on the same hockey team -- both dream of following in the wake of other daredevils, who made history trying to outwit the roaring strength  of Niagara Falls.  Who goes over? Who lives to tell the tale? 

It's June 15th, 1963 in Pasadena, California. Yesterday, school let out for the summer. Two weeks ago Pope John XXIII died; today, a Soviet astronaut was launched into space.

But for the enormous Shea family, it's the Grand Opening of SHEA FAMILY MOTORS and everyone is there. From pimply John-the-Blimp to Baby Jude to a statue of the Blessed Mother. The twins look green & uncomfortable, their hands smeared with the sugar of doughnuts meant for the customers. Paul & John discover the switch that made the car lift up & down in the bay. Annie wants to sell the shiny new Ambassador to Mr. Krowlakowski. From A THEORY OF EXPANDED LOVE

how many kids get left behind at Disneyland every year? There have to be a few of them. Among all those hundreds of cars in the parking lot, there's probably enough to form a club. Maybe the club could be called "The Left Behinds" or "Disney Orphans". How many of the stories could possibly have a happy ending? "The weird part is, when we lost Dominic, it was hours before we even realized he was gone."

- From the novel/audiobook, A THEORY OF EXPANDED LOVE, by Caitlin Hicks, excerpted here