Little Stories

Somewhere in my early teenage years, I discovered my mother's photo album - the one of her life before my dad. I should add that she had many, many albums of life with my father and with us, but I was endlessly fascinated by this idea of her having lived a life before us. After she finished high school in Sweden and finishing school in France (yes, finishing school), she moved to Jacksonville, Florida for a year to practice her English. There are black and white photos of her at parties in 60s style cocktail dresses (it was the 60s, after all), lounging in the grass with a gaggle of friends, and lounging around the pool in bikinis with cocktails. And – this really caught my attention – of men. There were men before my father? This was a brand new concept for me.

Sometimes my mother would tell me bits of her stories. Of living in her own apartment in Stockholm and sitting down to her dinner for one and a glass of wine; she loved it. Of working in Florida for a grumpy patent lawyer. Of previous loves. There was one German man in particular with whom she fell madly in love. As she told it, he went away for some reason and she missed him horribly. When he returned, she rushed to the train station to meet him and the moment she saw him she knew – she knew it was over. There was no feeling left.

I remember thinking then that I wanted lots of my own stories. (Greek chorus chimes in: Be careful what you wish for.) What I did not know at the young age of fifteen is that life is a collection of stories. Some are short stories, some are vignettes, some feel like epic novels and others are sequels… whether we want a Part Two or not.

Despite my desire for many stories, I’m not one for change. I prefer the comfort of the known. I take pleasure in routine. I am loyal to United Airlines because I know what I’m getting (though they keep changing those snacks-in-a-box options and I really miss the Classic). I know where to get my favorite coffee in Maui and favorite Indian in New York, and it throws me for a loop when I can’t. I like being a regular. I do. I do.

It is ironic, therefore, that my life is often full of self-imposed change. This is because even more than being uncomfortable with change, I am even less comfortable feeling stuck. And when the character gets stuck in a story, the writer must change something to move the tale forward. I am my own character and I am my own writer.

And just like a reader has no idea how the chapter will end, nor do I. For instance, I had no idea I’d be married at 25, nor divorced at 32. I could not foresee both my parents dying too young, one of a broken body, the other of a broken heart. If you told me that one story had me living in Manhattan for so long that I would call that urban island of 1 million people my home, and in the next I'd be living on a hunk of volcanic rock in the middle of the Pacific, I’d have laughed. HA HA HA!

And if you’d told me that one day I’d be roommates, simply roommates, with the young man with whom I had - until recently - been in a relationship, I would have shook my head. Don’t be silly, I would have said. That would never happen. But it has.

You just never know how the story will end. Nor when the next will begin.