Powerful Stories

Stories. They are what powers me. Stories I write and stories I read, but mostly the former. I get the juices going when a story comes to mind, then scurries around in there for a few days, then jumps out onto the page. It lands there and then looks back at me – right in the eye. Sometimes it sneers, sometimes it grins, sometimes it laughs or even giggles. Then it hides, under the top of the paper, waiting for someone to come and tickle the first words back to life.

The best stories, well, okay, the second best stories are the ones which bring a bunch of believable history to the me and the readers. It’s a tragedy that more people don’t immerse themselves in history. I love to dive in, to go under, to hold my breath down there in the years-gone-by as long as I can, then come surging to the surface and make a splash! I love to float on top, too, soaking in the sunshine of the future while the coolness of the past caresses my back.

So then, what are the best stories? What are the ones which really make me want to roll over in the grass, scratching my itch and making me feel alive all over? Well, they’re the stories about me! Of course they are. And stories about me which are told by me get to be as sparkly or dark as I choose for them to be.

There’s the story about the hitchhiking across the country, sometimes lucky, sometimes not so much.

There’s the story about the beautiful young lady who said “Yes” when I asked her.

There’s the story about my saying “Yes” when the doctor asked if I wanted to help birth my daughter.

There are the stories of the late night phone calls, the tears, the tumors, the trauma and the tightness which takes months to dissipate.

Yes, some are sparkly, like falling in love, or discovering a new fresco in an old church, or staring over the edge of a cliff from the top of a hill. Even telling you this now, those feelings are pulsing through my arteries and coming back into my heart happy.

But some are dark. Those are things like falling out of love, being locked in a church or a castle, knowing there’s a dragon lurking outside, or grasping at a crack in the stone to keep from falling. I shudder.

I’ve been down a lot of rivers in my years, and over a waterfall or two. Sometimes I got lucky and landed in a deep pool. Once there were rocks and I really had to hold my breath for a long time. But I came up, paddled over to a quiet pool, got my act together, and climbed out.

Then there are the times when you can just lean back in the canoe, let the sun shine on your face, listen to the birds singing in your life, and not worry a bit about where the river is headed. Usually while I’m relaxing there, my mind drifts back upstream, back across memory after memory...

Life is a mix, isn’t it? Looking back, at my history, then turning my head left and right to look at all the history flowing along beside me, I want to just jump out of the boat, slide off the log, and soak it in. Life is a good soaking. Want to come float beside me? We can tell stories all day long.

And then, with all that power pumping through our limbs, we can stand up in the boat and plunge into the water.