Story Seeds
On any ordinary day, there are stories waiting for us around corners, down alleyways
I’ve just spent the past four days on a writing retreat with a wonderful group of fellow women writers, and I am drenched in Story, wallowing in Words.
When I have on my story hat, when I put on my story glasses, when I clutch my story pen, then the world offers herself up to me. Notice! She says.
Look. Listen. Write it.
———
There is an empty steel bird cage wedged high on someone’s garden wall, its door open invitingly.
Did someone’s beloved budgie escape?
Is it an open invitation to a random bird who may be without a nest?
Or could it be a message to the passerby, the one who makes meaning of life with his pen, the one who is carrying the weight of an impossible choice in his heart?
Is the message saying Fly… or Stay??
——
Four boy-men, all legs and bravado, stroll past the lagoon. One raises his arm & throws an object, which arcs briefly against the blue sky and lands with a splash in the water. There is a kind of anger in the boy’s gesture.
The writer peers into the water to see what he has thrown away so dismissively. It’s a crab.
She sits back, holding a small hope that this creature will gather itself and slowly scuttle to safety. But it doesn’t move.
She looks away. Sometimes, you just have to look away.
When she looks again, because the small hope within still wriggles, a squadron of tiny scavenger fish is gathered around the crab, feeding.
A mother ambles past, three young children in tow. Each wields a colorful fishing net, the middle boy also holds a red bucket.
The older sister spots the crab and calls her brothers over. The writer can see the girl’s fingers itch to prod the creature, but she stays back, perhaps wary that it will leap out of the water and pinch her.
The middle boy is more daring, and pokes it with the end of his fishing net. When it doesn’t move, he gets braver and squats down to have a closer look.
Realizing it is well and truly dead, he turns his net around and scoops it up. His siblings have lost interest and are wading in the water up ahead. He puts his bucket down on the sand and, after a few fumbles, empties the crab into the bucket.
He threads the handle of the bucket onto his fishing net stick and heads off after his brother and sister, a pleased look on his face.
The writer watches, and wonders if this moment will feature in the boy’s memoir one day.
——
Three writers head to the river. One of them has Springsteen’s ‘Down to the River’ looping in her head.
We’d go down to the river
Down to the river we’d go
The car is hot and they have dark blue, silken water on their minds.
The tyres crunch on the dry dirt as they pull up to the clearing. A police van is parked there, its blue and yellow insignia uncomfortable in this place of broad sky and deep water.
They pile out of the car, towels in hand. A young couple and a boy emerge from the path that leads down to the river. One writer asks the woman at the front: ‘Weet jy waarom die polisie hier is? Wat het gebeur?’
The young woman, in white tank top and high cut shorts, answers reluctantly, her face unreadable: ‘Iemand het verdrink.’
The writer who asked the question takes a few steps closer to the woman. Her body knows the answer already but she asks: ‘Het jy die iemand geken?’
There is a silence, then something shifts on the young woman’s face. ‘Dit was my broer.’
The older woman looks back at her passengers as the realization begins to sink in.
Then, tears in her eyes, she walks up to the young woman and puts a gentle hand on her shoulder. ‘Ek is so jammer.’
The woman nods, the pain beginning to etch its path on her face.
The other two writers are still standing by the car. It takes a bit longer for the heavy words ‘verdrink’ ‘my broer’ to roll down the dusty path to their feet.
One takes in a sharp breath, the other looks around helplessly. ‘Oh my God, that’s terrible.’
After gently squeezing the hands and murmuring condolences to the man and the boy, who are standing unmoored by their shiny red car, the older woman makes her way back to the others. There’s a quiet discussion and all agree to get back into the car and head home to the retreat center.
Before they climb in, the other two writers turn towards the young family, each of them standing like a planet in solo orbit.
The second writer approaches the young woman first, then the husband and lastly, the boy. She gives each a gentle touch on the hand and, tears on her cheeks, offers her condolences.
The youngest writer approaches the bereaved woman and quietly asks if she can hug her. The woman nods and they embrace.
In fairy tales, you have to knock three times before the door opens.
Here, now, on this quiet Sunday, it is this third encounter that unlocks the young woman’s grief. Her body shakes as her sobs reverberate around the clearing where death has slipped in, on this ordinary Sunday.