A Story

I come from a long line of Storytellers. My father tells stories of math and of science. I'm not sure if it is his misfortune or mine that I don't understand them. Few do. I seldom hold on to much more than a fragment of those stories. Sometimes he tells stories of cooking or hiking and those are the ones I follow. His father told stories of history and religion and travels to places steeped in both. It has been many years since even he could have recalled all of his own stories and I was only a girl then. I can recall little more than fragments of most of his stories as well. A small handful I have still, jotted down in a journal somewhere when I realized they would likely be the last stories I would hear from him. They were not of history and religion, but of people and events that became him. He was who he was because of those stories. I am who I am because he told them. They were the last I heard, save one. He lived several years more, but as his memory faded he spoke less.

I am a storyteller. I knew it suddenly one day and when my mind dared to think the words they echoed in my heart and I knew it was true. And so I must write them. My stories are simply what is important to me today. They are what I'm studying now. They are what made  me smile, or cry. My stories are what makes me who I am. They are what life is made of and simple as they be, they spin themselves around and around into stories and I know I must keep them or they too will become shards of memories.