title: Ordinary Miracles
author/editor: Jasmine Smith
reviewed by: Tror
ORDINARY MIRACLES
Recently, I was reading past, archived Ninepatches on the web site and ran across our Miracles and Answered Prayers issue. That issue reminded me of a book I'd been wanting to share with readers. It's called, Ordinary Miracles and is by Jasmine Smith. The author is an ordinary wife and mother who loses the love of her life, but finds herself.
What's extraordinary about this book is its ordinary-ness and its real-ness. It's the sort of book women can enjoy because Jasmine's story could be their own. It's also the kind of tale men might like because it reveals what goes on in the minds of ordinary women.
For example, at one point Jasmine realizes that she's been hauling around emotional events -- like parental rejection -- and dragging them out periodically to examine them again like items at an antiques road show.
Jasmine is not the only character in this book, though. She describes others. There's Al the man with the cute bum, Teddy, the attentive teddy bear and Rosie the pig. Rosie turns out to be a wonderful role model. It seems pigs love well, forgive easily, enjoy a good scratch, and live life.
Perhaps you can tell this book is also funny in a dry sort of way, and not all that ordinary after all.
TROR (Mar.'06) adds, "A friend lent me this book. Since the volume has a pig on its cover, I thought she did it because I like children's literature. Turns out, that book was exactly what I needed to read since I am an ordinary thirty-nine year-old wife and mother who's just left the 'love of my life'. It was comforting to know that I'm not the only one who's got a head full of non-sense to figure out!"