Randell Jones
Daniel Boone Footsteps
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6-minute Stories

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"The Perfect Imperfect" by Alison Rice Bruster

 – That was the plan, anyway.

In that moment, we stopped feeling sorry for ourselves and remembered why we came.

 

After a career spent finding the voices of senior business executives, Alison Rice Bruster is writing a new chapter. She holds a BA in English Literature from Queens University of Charlotte. This is her third story included in a collection from the Personal Story Publishing Project. She is a member of the Charlotte Writers Club, Charlotte Lit, and the North Carolina Writers Network. When they are not out traveling in search of adventure, Alison and her husband Terry live in Fort Mill, South Carolina.

Alison Rice Bruster

Author’s Talk

Writing this story gave me a chance to relive a trip that brings back many recollections. During the early part of the journey, we had unique experiences, like walking around on the roof of the Duomo in Milan, driving the high-anxiety Sella Pass through the Dolomite mountains, and wandering through a part of Venice that most tourists never see.  

These are the kind of memories we hoped our trip would leave us with­–images of plans that paid off, dreams that came to fruition, and times we would always treasure. When pictures from that part of the trip surface on our digital picture frame at home, they leave us smiling.   

We have fewer pictures from the second half of the trip, when we were both sick with COVID. After all, when you are up all night coughing and glued to your bed by exhaustion during the day, you’re not exactly having an experience you want to preserve for posterity.  

Our impromptu picnic on a side street in Orvieto is a vibrant memory because it gave us a moment to treasure in the midst of extremely imperfect circumstances. The food and wine, the picturesque surroundings, the afternoon sunlight, and the chance to take it all in, were a gift that we needed badly at that point in the trip. And when the picture I took of the view we could see from our perch that day shows up on our photo frame, we pause and give thanks for the gift.

Randell Jones