The pace of time used to quicken and slow with the seasons. I remember feeling the days when it seemed like they would never slow down. As if every day was quicker than the last, racing toward its end. Then tomorrow’s end. Months would pass in the blink of an eye.
I hadn’t realized at the time that it was my routine causing this. The routine I would complain about. I would whine to myself and my closest confidants that my life wasn’t supposed to be like this. At the time, I’d suspected that some people felt the same as I did but that most people didn’t. That I was surrounded by people who were content with their lives being mundane and I was the only one with daydreams about selling everything and moving my kids into a van.
Those were the days before the stories came. My life is split into three acts. The first is before the stories. The second is when I started to get the stories but I had to learn how to receive them. Then the third, when I became a storyteller. The middle act was the one where time felt the fastest. Figuring things out can feel that way. Must be something about how the brain works.
“Oh boy” she spoke aloud. Catching herself mid-thought and opening her eyes to the streaming sunlight of the morning on her face. The sound of birds dancing on the breeze off of the lake through the open storm door.
“It’s going to be one of those days, better get up,” she said getting out of bed. After a glance in the mirror, she put her clothes on and slipped into sandals. One glimpse out the window would immediately reveal this as a day that would fuel daydreams when winter came again. Throwing on a sweater, she slipped out the door.
Walking in this town would make anyone’s heart lighter.
‘I don’t know how I landed in my favorite place on earth but I must have done something right to get here.’ As she walked, the thoughts crept back in.
Does everyone have a purpose? I don’t think I could have gotten through life without becoming the storyteller. This wasn’t the first time she’d found herself wondering that. Was she on the way toward illness when a happy redirect steered her back to where she belonged?
Wasn’t it the same as with alcohol when she changed her diet? Was it the diet change that allowed the stories? Didn’t the stories start coming first? It’s impossible to know.
Right at that moment, an Eagle swooped down and landed on a park bench by the shore. “Ahhh, old friend. You’re right. What wisdom do you have for me today?” Then she sat down next to the eagle and it just stayed there, perched on the bench, staring out over the lake.
“I thought I might find you here.” A voice called from behind her. “Although I didn’t expect you to have company”.
Lucy cautiously approached carrying a coffee and a green juice.
“Goodbye friend. I’ll see you later” I said and the eagle took flight out over the water. Hunting close to the shore.
“That will always be slightly alarming to me.” She said, offering me my choice of drinks.
“Nothing to be alarmed by,” I said, taking the juice with a look of appreciation. “What would you have done if I wasn’t here?”
“I knew you were here.” She said with a wink.
“Yes, you did, didn’t you?”
“What I don’t know, is what’s causing the fog over you today. Want help lifting it?”
“I think I’m going to sit in it for a while longer. It has more to share with me.”
“Another story is coming isn’t it?”
“I think so. It feels… elusive still.”
“Where are you on the journey?”
“Still reminiscing about when the stories started coming”
“MMMM, I remember. It was untenable for you. Overwhelming.”
“It was, wasn’t it? And the time.”
“Yes, gone in big gulps.”
“I remember you were always feeling like things were missing.”
“Things were missing. That was the most validating part of the thing. It felt like everyone thought I couldn’t be satisfied. But it turned out I was right. A big part of me had been missing.”
“Yes, it had.” She added after a long pause. Sadness in her voice. “It hurt you to feel that pull. I remember it clearly. You were in pain and you didn’t know what to do about it.”
“I remember you telling me to stop writing and try to do something else to fix it.” She said with a wink.
“It worked didn’t it?”
”Not in the way you intended.”
“That doesn’t matter. What do you think the story is about this time?”
“I don’t know for sure. I think maybe us.”
“MMM yes, the spiral. I had a feeling this was coming.”
“It’s magic isn’t it?”
“It is.”