The Stories We Become

June 11, 2023 / Lisa / 8 Comments

‘In the end we all become stories.’

I don’t know who said that but I keep returning to those words. At the ending, or maybe the beginning, when we’re gone, those words are all that’s left. But oh, how those remaining stories are priceless!

How many times have we said to one another, ‘remember when…’ and suddenly time rolls back?

The words of a story and we’re laughing.

The power of a story and we’re melancholy.

Or grieving.

I love the reminiscing that makes me laugh. There’s nothing better than the warm feeling that brings everything briefly to life again. Or reminds me of the magic of a place, like Auntie’s kitchen with all the wonderful scents and her telling us stories of a time long past. Or all the times she put me on her lap and let me bang away.

In the end that’s all we’re left with. Stories blown out into the wind like dandelion seeds.

Someone I care for was recently talking about giving away his possessions. He said some might look like junk and people might wonder why he kept them. I suggested he write down the story of each object. Not only where it came from, but why it was important to him.

The story would make the object priceless.

I have two very old, smoke-stained christening baby gowns. Hand-stitched and fragile. I framed them under archive glass. My husband suggested I type up their story and put it under the paper backing of the frame. That way, no matter where the dresses end up, someone will know their value.

*Claire – an amazing, unique woman and the one who wore the christening gowns.*

In the end, everything becomes a story. Places that are gone. Things we cherished. Paths we walked. Old songs we used to sing.

This past weekend I saw that several plants in a flowerbed had been flattened. Immediately my hands went to my hips and I said, very irritated, ‘damn it Arwen!’. Then I realized the old dog was gone and wouldn’t nap in the plants anymore. It made me momentarily sad but then I had to laugh, remembering how much she loved snoozing in sun-warmed dirt or pillowed on a bed of rosemary. Something that used to drive me nuts is now a story I cherish.

*Still don’t know how she managed this one.*

Oh, the unbearable sweetness and sadness, the laughter and tears, of the stories we leave.

A Well-Loved Book

April 21, 2023April 21, 2023 / Lisa / 5 Comments

My husband was reading a brand-new book with dinner last night and dribbled beet juice across a pristine page. He wasn’t happy. A few cuss words might have been involved. My first thought, which I kept silent, was ‘it’s now our book!’.

What does a well-loved book look like in your space? I promise each new book that comes into our house that I will love and cherish it. I’m careful and respectful the first time I open the cover, being cautious about bending the cover back too far. I try to find something nice for a bookmark. I wipe my hands on my clothes (pages are more important). I don’t dog-ear pages and try not to break the spine.

That lasts until, maybe, the first chapter and I’m immersed in the story and forget the real world. It depends on how far I read before I have to put the book down. The next time open it, anxious to get back into the new story world, the bookmark will have wandered away so a corner of paper towel or a torn envelope, or the cell phone gets used. And of course, in my happiness, I open the book wider, weigh the pages down with the greasy butter dish, and give no thought to the spine.

Our books are read over and over, and if they were dogs, they’d have a great life. They get hauled around. They go on car rides. They go outside. They get table scraps like beets. They get snuggles on the comfy chair by the fire with a blanket. They get undivided attention.

We have some books so well-loved and well-read, and so old, that pages are falling out. My husband has some where whole chapters have gone missing. He has even lost covers. But he’ll still re-read them because he knows what happens in those missing bits. And there’s always the hope that they’ll show back up some day with their own stories about hanging out with lost socks.

I also have books showing their age and looking elderly and fragile. I’ve bought second, and sometimes third, copies of them in order to keep the original from getting worse. I love opening them carefully, tucking the loose pages back inside, and seeing my very young handwriting on the inside cover. Or my sister’s young handwriting. She had a habit of claiming my things.

*She’s also the only photogenic one in the family.*

I see my handwriting and try to remember who that little girl was and what she thought the first time she opened that book. Little did she know all the years of friendship and enjoyment those characters would give her. And she’d never have believed it if someone had told her she’d still be reading the same book when she was that old.

There’s a lot to be said for the new book smell, the pristine pages, the not-cracked spine, the new adventure waiting. There’s a place for that.

But there’s also a very special place for long-time friends that are maybe showing their age but are still willing to whisk you away on an adventure or sit with you and share their story.

Here’s to old friends and well-loved books.

Path or Destination?

April 1, 2023 / Lisa / 12 Comments

I had a difficult conversation with our son recently. During that talk he said there was no sense starting something now because it would take a long time to reach the result we were talking about. I told him he was looking at taking a long path, not reaching a destination. I’ve been thinking about those words a lot since then. Plus thinking about how far down that path he would be if he’d stepped out on the journey three years ago. It doesn’t help to dwell on ‘what might have been’.

*A trail we’d walk, now changed from a forest fire.*

My husband and I used to go for walks together. When we did, there had to be a destination. He isn’t one to just go on a ramble with no known end in sight. Where we used to live, you could head out into the trees and walk as long as you wanted. There was the road, there were trails, there were logging roads. By myself, I could walk until I was done, then turn around and go home, whether I’d reached a goal or not. But that used to drive my husband nuts. He needed to know where he was going. Which was fine with me, too, because for me the goal was walking with him.

*That’s the baby sister by the way, not me.*

I think about all the actual paths we’ve walked, and of course I think about the metaphorical paths we’ve walked. Most of those metaphorical trails we’ve followed in our lives still have no known destination. We’re still meandering along wondering where this rough path is going. Maybe hoping for a log to sit on and rest some day.

*My friend Jenni is always game for a walk.* *Here she is in Erin’s Wood.*

There have been so many paths that I have turned around on before I got to the destination. But I loved doing that. Just heading out for a ramble, being out in the trees, no destination, no timeline, no goal.

There are also a lot of paths I’ve chosen to never step out onto, for so many reasons. A lot of those reasons had to do with fear. Fear of holding back those I walked with. Fear of failure. Fear of letting those I care about down. Fear of not being good enough. Fear of falling. Do I regret those? Not really. Except for the walks I turned down out of fear of holding back others. One of those friends I worried about disappointing died unexpectedly in a car accident. I no longer have her in my life to hold back, or to disappoint, and those things don’t seem as important any more.

Circling back to that conversation with my son…I have to step off that path. I can’t share it anymore. I can’t lead the way. If there is a destination, it’s different for both of us.

When he was little, my husband took him up a trail known locally as Lookout Point. It’s steep and narrow and honestly, the only trail I’ve ever been on that completely creeps me out. I swear it’s haunted. I don’t hike it. But on that day, my husband told our son to stay close to the uphill side, not the edge. Our son of course went too close to the edge and disappeared. That fast. A log bordered the outer edge but the land under the log had slid away. Our son slipped down into that gap. My husband saw him, down in that gap, hanging on. I don’t know which of them was more terrified. After that, our son stayed on the uphill side.

Whether he’ll do that now, follow our advice, or go his own way, we shall see. And my husband will always be there to grab him and keep him from falling. I’m not sure I can.

Many years ago my husband and I were walking a trail near Troublesome Creek. We were just friends going for walks (so I thought). There was this slight incline in the trail. He went ahead and turned to give me a hand up. I was surprised that he thought I couldn’t make it up on my own. Later, when I finally realized there was something else going on, he told me it had been an excuse to take my hand.

Even back then, he had the destination in mind while I meandered along the path.