The Minutes of a Minute Minute

"Get me the minutes of the minute minute, I mean the exact time he spoke the words, 'Out of the belly, and into the abyss.'" He needed no gavel to pound, the podium shook as he landed his fist heavy on the corner, "I want a time-stamped, agenda record of his statement in writing."

I preferred the Spui, with all its cobblestones and bungalow architecture known for its seductive intelligence in design and charm.

Spui, larger than life, compared to its more famous cousin Amsterdam, which counterintuitively, was more heady than The Netherland's international intellectual district, The Hague.

Alas, The Hague's new position of International Premise Profiler was the entire reason for my invitation to this breathtaking boundary, and therefore visits beyond The Hedge were just added bonuses.

My real focus was reading body language, which things were chosen to be retold, and which were left out, what was foretold and what was distanced from the facts of cases.

And therefore The Barron with all his direct complementary skills of factual research and precedented repetition, was judged a necessary and formidible ally.

My breathing constricted, 'I am the only trafficking death investigator for this division.'

"You don't really take your job seriously do you?" Sharone, a tenure veteran of The Hague, surreptitiously broke into my day-dream meditation, unnoticed by the heavy-handed speaker with the mic.

It seemed she bought the seemingly ancient stereotypical accessories of a paralegal to promote her pre-scripted identity, complete with pre-planned activities and acquaintances. In short, creating a known and fixed boundary intended to reflect to me and others who she was, what she wanted, and what her life complications were. This it seemed, limited her, mitigating possible risks.

If that was all there was to it though, I'd be impenetrable.

"I don't believe there's a soul here, who believes in you..." She dropped her glasses down. It would have been cliche if it weren't pitiful.

"I think that's the reason they came looking for me. Because I do believe in my job, and my gifts." A genuine smile dimpled right and left. "My qualifications and portfolio speak for themselves."

"Yeah, about that..." With a shrug of shoulders, she sank deeper into her shell-pink cardigan.

"Who exactly, came looking for you?"

"It was a convention." I shrugged.

Projecting casual confidence, I laid my paisley bound journal from my favorite Spui bookstore, a zero-waste concept business, with a timeless Dutch idiom, now, a well-branded logo of an angel peeing on a tongue, roughly meaning, 'the taste is to die for', and bearing a simple tagline, 'satisfying local chocolate & coffee shoppe' on a window sign, benches, wooden clogs, and refillable mugs for sale.

Again I began to day dream, again she interjected poisonously. "Is there even a job description?"

"I was hired to be somewhat a research paralegal," Holystically sensing the narcissistic steerage I'd known intimately from my ex, and the reason I didn't share the same continent with Russ, thinking he'd walk back into my life with my late husband's passing. "I examine facts and precendents of a case crossed with behavioral premonition."

"Wha...at?!"

"I've been known to be a visionary."

"So, you're a witch consumed with slavery and death, holding a recipe book of manipulative spells."

"Wow!" I threw up an 'I'm good,' snapping wave I'd gotten off my late Cali, USA husband,

"That's a passive-aggressive backhanded compliment. FYI, I have One source... Angelic Minutes." Without ado, I moved on.

The cases read so simple, they were like screenplays to me, and I wrote coverage on each one just as I would a script.

Ten cases in a day, and no challenge, human trafficking, and find the hubs on three different continents, I spelled it out, how, when, and where, beginning with my old hometown.

"Four men with grey hoodies, sandy-blonde, three day scruff, all appearing as disillusioned $20,000/year 30-somethings, all on cell phones, sitting within four feet of each other on alternating benches, in assembly line fashion, where more than 40 kids were at play, and less than half had personal supervision, and all walkers had to funnel through that path to town.

Not one of these men were attached to any of the kids at The Castle Park.

As my eyes moved up the hill a lone figure stood leaning against a post, the same nondescript hooded figure on a cell phone, but looking like a $30,000/year captain of the team. 'Sup?!' I looked in his eyes, and even in my vision he fidgeted, texted something and looked at the crest of the ridge, where a limo-tint PT Cruiser sat running, with a man that could be described as anybody's bbq dad. Oversized blonde mustache, flat blonde hair, oversized margarita shirt, who now also seemed fidgety, sat at the wheel across lines in the car-park.

I circled wide, and the hoodies all left, only the PT Cruiser was moved down at the far end of the car-park where he had an open path."

When the joint task force hit the spot at one o'clock p.m. on that Saturday, my prophetic word was manifest, just as I described. And so it went on, across the globe, until the exposé job I'd been hired to do, had been virtually accomplished.

I completed my meraki magnum opus, a Franciscan Stillwell herb'n° encyclopedia, and was ready to return home the following Friday, when Isabella surprised me, arriving by train after a flight from the USA. 'Had it already been 6 months?' I must've squealed like a little child delighted with catching a sparkling star.

Her dual-credits completed, she created an opportunity for herself to enter the pre-veterinary med program.

As a second time single parent, I was forever grateful for the multi-generational relationships enjoyed by my parents and their offspring, but how I'd missed her, "Mama, come home, but first, you must show me the countryside... And this Spui coffeeshop I'm hearing so much about."

It was, however, at a single book signing in Giethoorn, the bicycling town with waterways and no roads, when the shadows of time shifted and I least expected my personal vision to be fulfilled.

As I laughed with my youngest daughter during the pre-party cucumber time, a voice I knew in every cell, so long I'd heard it, cut through the joyful ramé, "Hiyee... Gia,"

The electro-magnetic resonance of his voice energized me when he called my name.

My eyes lit, and my daughter saw, but I wasnt in need of hiding from a 16 year old who loved her mama.

Once upon a time, I needed to know and love her late father, he'd pirated me back to myself, stood me up on my feet pointed out how right were those who believed in and trusted me, "Stand your ground Gia, you're better than this, stronger than this, have more faith than this. I've seen you at work, I've seen you with your kids. You need to lean hard into your faith right now. I'll talk to you tomorrow." Click. Just like our life together, it was a brief conversation, a brief decade, a brief moment in time, but it was poignant, and all mine. I loved him wholeheartedly. And I got the ganas, the grit, and the beautiful Mestiza to prove it.

"I'd know that voice anywhere," I yelled. Thirty years ago, Jack was the first to open the door, walk into my heart, while cell by cell, he lit up the best potential with me.

It was impossible to forget the brilliance of one blue eye, and the compassionate warmth of a chocolate brown that seemed to go black, as it did now, with the iris fading into the pupil on a passionate flare.

As I spun, my boho skirts and braids twirled around me. Throwing arms up over his shoulders in an open hug, my silk wrap enveloped us. "I never should have stayed silent," The whispered words were as promise in my ear.

"Gia," The quilt shop owner, made a two-minute curtain call, and I turned, Jackson's hands still on my hips, where waves seemed to crash.

Jack was practiced at accepting my choices. "I won't let go. If you choose me. I will support anything that comes with your chosen path."

"This time I'll say what I was thinking as a girl," The most bouyant smile lifted from my heart, "'If you kiss me, I'll leave everything else to be with you, and bring only my daughter with me.'"

There was no kiss I could have dreamed up, like this, it was more a meeting of persons, a third eye kiss... The one where you feel the shuddering magic approach as the lips brush between your eyebrows, "Will you make plans for me... Once more.