Mining for Gold

I’ve been thinking a lot about stories lately. Huge, world renowned tomes, like the epic narrative Moby Dick, whose history and lessons far surpass simply staying away from giant whales. Or smaller works like Dahl’s Witches, which weaves a clever tale spooky enough to keep my children awake long after dark. There are the family stories of my history students: the Polish baby born on the boat to America, the great-grandfather with one glass eye as a result of a war injury, the great-great grandmother that owned a speakeasy in the Flats during prohibition. And my own family stories, like my grandpa playing at FDR’s inaugural ball and having to leave his sax as collateral at the hotel when the banks all closed, or the day my dad rescued some boaters from their sinking dinghy in Lake Erie.

They move us, these stories. They make us who we are. And I’m beginning to think that life is a constant dance of getting the story told, a search for voice and genre and meaning. Maybe we all have a STORY and our life is the fight to figure out how best to express it. And a fight it is. The surface is too easy and the story is too deep. I find the digging complicated on the best of days; mining has always been a dangerous occupation. And the soot and avalanches keep only the bravest from the task.

But really, everyone has a story to tell. I hand pen and paper to reluctant teens and with a little time and effort they mine diamonds from the muck. My offspring recount stories at the top of their lungs with eyes wide as saucers and mystery in their smiles. I have told stories through drama with battered women hiding and re-building, each line a link in their chain to breaking free. And I have witnessed the closing lines of stories cut abruptly short.

And oh, how I worry about these stories that might not be told. The pictures haunt me: a slight boy in a typhoon-ravaged arena, or an elderly man eating dinner alone, glancing endlessly at the wedding ring that he still reverently wears. The young man orphaned early, but too proud to beg or run the streets, or the little girl I know who wants nothing more than to go to school without the burden of the side effects of her disease, and its cure.

But mostly it’s just about me. Stories show me who I am in the dark of a powerless night with only candlelight to illuminate the way. Themes and conflicts spin me as gently as a jackhammer unearthing a treasure. Characters play out on the page and learn lessons far beyond my scope of teaching. My spelunker’s helmet holds just enough light to illumine these nuggets of gold. And they are mine, these stories. Musty, encrusted, none-too-pretty sometimes, but singularly, powerfully mine. What a gift. And I would be a fool not to exhume them.