Doris gets a little help on The Road Back to her Ordinary World after receiving the reward of adulation because of her gifts of hospitality, positivity and baking.
After dropping the tool he had in his hand, he wiped his forehead and eyes and stood up, puzzled. What in the world can that be?, he must have said to himself, but because his preoccupation was with the broken-down water system and he knew that he had a limited amount of time to fix it, he kept ignoring the idea that maybe, and seriously maybe, something else needed his attention right away elsewhere. He couldn’t exactly pinpoint where those sounds came from, but he quickly figured out once he started walking behind the gate and around the pond with the papyrus trees.
Doris’s innermost cave is how her hospitality will work to create peace for the bats and the fairies that have inhabited her home. There is a pause in the action here for the reader to feel the stakes. Will the bats be angry that the honey caused them to stay silent? How would the bats react to laughter of the fairies? Would the bats have a sense of humor? Would her “perfect” canary-inspired idea of baking honey cakes for the bats with the crunchy centers turn into a nightmare? Would Doris be more of an outcast than ever if the bats AND the fairies looked down on her silly ways and ideas? She thought she had it bad just being a duck-sized fairy, but now the stakes are higher.
Ethiopia is a country that still fills my heart to this day. I took a memorable eight-day trip to Ethiopia with G-Adventures, the National Geographic tour operator that teaches what exploration with purpose means, in August 2019.
Doris crosses the threshold when she acts on her idea to bake the cakes for the bats. On one hand, it’s in Doris’s normal world to bake these cakes; however, she’s never baked honey cakes for bats before while they were sleeping in the rafters of her house. Will they like the cakes? Will they stop being so afraid? Do they even like parties or will the party scare them? This is a new world. Doris has never lived in her house with trembling fairies AND shaking bats. Will her instinct to bake new crunchy honey cakes serve her well, or will the crunchy honey cakes and the party turn into a total disaster?
As an archeologist and philanthropist, world travel has been my lifeblood and has led serendipitously to the transformation of the lives of orphans and the welfare of abused animals in five countries over the last sixteen years. I met ordinary people who, like me, just wanted to make a difference in this world. In this time of the Coronavirus, the world has shuttered. Suddenly our passions, projects and even our connection with people have been put on hold. How do we keep transforming ourselves and the world from the confines of our four walls? How do any of us continue to do what we’ve always done with such dramatic life changes? How do we find a new normal?
