Story

Sometimes, I feel I am an archeologist digging for story. I search story in antique stores, swap meets, restaurants, as I wait at doctor’s office, hospitals and grocery store lines. Sometimes, it feels I watch life as it unfolds, removed, observant, but not involved. Sometimes, when life is coming at me fast, I become too involved to find a moment to write. At those times, I excavate memory.

I listen to others stories, tucking them in memory to add to my own experiences. This is where my stories, poems and novels come from. This jumble of finds, this amalgamate of incidents I want to share.

All my life, people: strangers, friends, my son’s friends, people I meet in the flu shot line, tell me their stories. My middle son often commented this and wondered on the reason. Sometimes, I’ve wondered, too. But as the years pass and it happens again and again, I’ve decided it’s because I listen. Not politely, but with a taking it in attitude. Everyone wants to be heard. I hear. It is a story. I love stories. I want to be told a story. I want to write a story. A story that I laugh, cry, wonder about. A story that recalls memories, hurts, successes.

I read books for stories. I read poems for stories. I look for stories everywhere.

Stories happen. They happen everywhere: A grandchild is born after several miscarriages, a gloomy outlook, a difficult but miracle pregnancy and c-section. A beautiful baby whose parents had gone through so many setbacks. The first night: The baby struggles to breath, the parents don’t know what’s wrong or what to do. They try to suction out the baby’s mouth and call for help. Fear crashes into the day’s miracle.

But it’s only a minor glitch. A common little problem. Tell that to the heart dropping to the gut, the knees that can no longer hold as the flash of adrenaline burns away. I listen with a heart clenched remembering those times. The times when my children scared me witless. As my son tells me of the first night of his daughter’s life, I remember exactly that heart-stopping fear, that sink to the floor relief. I remember parenthood and my babies’ stories.

I turn away to hide tears because I know this is only the first such scare. I turn away because it was this son who gave me my most horrific scare and I don’t want to tell him that that heart-high feeling isn’t really ever going to go away, not even when she’s over thirty. No, I just slip the whole thing into my memory for a story and listen.