Stories, All

"Lord we know what we are, but not what we may be."
 - Hamlet, by Shakespeare 

"We're all stories in the end. Just make it a good one."
 - Doctor Who, the 11th 


Sidewalks, cars, buses, airplanes. Large businesses and corner stores, coffee shops and social services, churches and homeless shelters. A man with beautiful dreadlocks, or with an ill-fitting suit, or with a child holding his hand. A woman with a mysterious scar on her arm, or with cobalt-blue hair, or with anxiety making it hard to breathe. A child who is confident, a child who is shy, a child who is lost in a daydream. They surge and flock and disperse, a scattering of beings throughout the corners of the earth. I see them, I am one of them, I want to ask, "What is your story?"

Did they, like me, grow up watching their mother make bread every week, her hands mixing the dough, kneading it, setting it in a warm place to let it rise, placing it in the oven and slicing steaming pieces to give to her children with honey or jam? Did they, like her, grow up without a father, an irreplaceable hole fitted with the memories and stories of a man who was, yet is no more? Did they, like her, learn how to create and love and be unique?

Do they, like me, see raindrops falling on concrete and pavement and think of their grandmother pointing out how there is a fraction of a second when you can see a cup and saucer? Drop hits pavement, splashes upwards in the shape of a teacup, delicate and brief. Did they, like her, dream of something which was taken, such as being a dancer? Rehearsal on an old stage, wooden point of the ballet shoe going into a nail and stopping the rotation of the foot even as the body went into a pirouette.

Did they, like me, like to watch their father at work? Did they grow up deeply inhaling the scent of freshly-cut wood, with the sound of a saw and hammer a casual background noise as they climbed trees and made mud pies and forts? Did they, like him, come from a family who farmed, who sold fresh produce every summer and remembers things such as outhouses and party-line telephones?

Do they, like me, feel the confusion and wonder of who I am and who I could be? Do they have doubts about past decisions, relief about some things which didn't come to pass in contrast to the hope held out for that happening at the time, and ideas for the future which can be held with loose curiosity or a tight resolve?


Stories, songs, and poetry. Written words, learned traditions, and oral retellings. Did they, did you, did I. We did, we do, we will. We are the forests and the trees, the stars and the galaxies, the minute details and infinite possibilities. Seedlings, buds, and blooms. We hope, we feel, we remember. We are stories.