Have you ever had one of those kismet-y, Twilight Zone-ish moments, where something happens, and the tiny hairs on the back of your neck sort of stand up and give a delicious little wave of recognition that “whoa, this is freaky”? I just had a good one yesterday.

I was looking through 1969 issues of Life magazine that my mom had saved. I pulled them out because my son asked me a question about the moon landing, and my mom had saved these particular issues because, of course, they featured that historic event.

We were laughing at the ads and marveling at the ubiquitous presence of cigarettes in hand, the prices of things, etc., when I turned to a story titled “The Creatures of the Tides.” You can see below the image that caught my eye; it’s vivid, crystal-clear, and striking:

But what really made my central nervous system stand up and take notice was the caption: Go ahead, read it. (If it’s too small for you, you’ll just have to take my word for it.) Do you see it? It’s a tardigrade!

Judging by the blank look on your face, perhaps a bit of back story is in order here. I started working on my second novel, The Water Bearers, a couple of years ago and had sort of gotten myself stuck on a plot point. I took a break to see if inspiration would bump me on the head somewhere else, and sat down to watch an episode of Cosmos with my younger son. It happened to be an episode about tardigrades, which I had never heard of before that day, and I will forever be grateful to my science-loving son (and Neil DeGrasse Tyson, of course) for introducing me to them.

If you’ve never heard of tardigrades, either, they are some of the coolest, most fascinating creatures on the planet. These things can freeze completely, or dry into a dormant state resembling death and come back to life, reviving with only a single drop of water. They can survive acid, radiation, and space. Nicknamed the Water Bear, under a microscope, they actually do resemble little bears, and they move like a higher-order animal. They have been found everywhere from glacier holes to pavement stones, from the Himalayas to the bottom of the ocean. They are a true wonder of indestructibility.

There I sat with my son, my jaw hanging open in astonishment, hearing about these creatures for the first time in my life, and BAM! I knew exactly where I was going to go next with the book.

Fast forward back to yesterday afternoon with me now: There I am, sitting on the floor with a pile of magazines that my mother, who passed away in 1996, set aside for her kids way back in 1969, while she was still carrying me in her womb. I imagine her choosing the issues carefully, knowing that she was preserving something important for her children to look back on, decades ahead. I flip the page, see that striking image, read the caption and realize that IT’S A TARDIGRADE.

Maybe I’m being a little melodramatic here (duh, fiction writer), but to me, it felt almost like my mother was sending me a message from the past: “Pay attention to this creature, Jules; it’s going to be important to you someday.”

She was right. First read-through is done, let the editing begin.

Thanks, Mom.