stories

When visiting family, old stories inevitably come up. And I've always known my grandmother had a wealth of stories to tell, an ability I'd like to think came my great-grandmother, an Irish immigrant to the US who used to scare my grandmother with stories of the Bean Sidhe (banshee in Gaelic). Maybe she was a descendant from some great Irish bard. It was from my grandmother that I first heard the myths of the old Nordic and Greek gods.

In high school when studying World War II, we had to interview someone from that time for stories. And though I heard a few, the one I remember the most was my grandmother traveling back to the States from Panama (my grandfather was in the Navy), alone with a newborn (my aunt), on a blacked-out ship that cruised through the waters in a zig-zag pattern.

Anyway, while in Virginia, I learned more about my great-grandmother that weekend than I had in the last twenty-five years. I knew, for instance, that she had a brother who went away and fought in Europe during WWI, but I didn't know she had more than one brother. And to be honest, I really didn't know anything about my great-grandfather.

So after coming back to DC and thinking about it, I'm sending my grandmother a note to ask her to write down what she can of my great-grandmother, and also more stories about herself. Not only is it valuable information to know about yourself and where you came from, but as a writer, it could also provide the idea for the next great story. I already have one idea in mind after hearing more about a story I sort of knew a few details about. Of course, after thinking more about it, I wondered if it would be "realistic" enough for a novel. Sometimes life can be much stranger than fiction, you know?