A Gift of Miracles

Biology Ph.D. candidate Darcy Miller is one step away from completing her degree requirements: writing a grant proposal. She's having problems with this necessary step, at least according to her mentor Dr. Reed; she's treating it like a scientific summary of her dissertation rather than a piece that inspires potential investors. So Dr. Reed sends Darcy to consult with English professor Nathan Riley on how to approach the piece. For Darcy, meeting Nathan is an immediate clash of her extreme left brain methodical, scientific thinking versus his extreme right brain thinking where there are endless possibilities directed by energies within the cosmos. After meeting with Nathan, Darcy finds a notebook in her Math professor father Frank Miller's attic, the notebook that belonged to her mother/his wife, Marianne Miller, who was killed by a drunk driver when Darcy was a year old. Darcy has no memory of her mother, and her father never divulges any information about her. In the final written page of the notebook is a "to do" list that looks like she was planning on giving items away to various people, with four people left on the list, and the only one that she and Frank actually know is her Aunt Kathy. Nathan believes that completing this task of giving these items to their intended recipients will not only help Darcy open her mind to writing the grant proposal, but open her mind to other possibilities of what can happen in life. A reluctant and skeptical Darcy does embark on this process with Nathan by her side. It ends up being a difficult emotional task for Darcy in learning various aspects about her mother, but ultimately a cathartic one in discovering what her mother had intended for her in finding the notebook.