Should you ever be misguided enough to ask for my advice, I always begin with, “Well, I remember the time that. . .”  You’ll roll your eyes & wish you had kept your big mouth shut.  Perhaps you are wondering if you should go on a date with your co-worker. You know the brooding one that always stands just a little too close to you while in line for the fax machine? Yeah, that one.  You decide to ask me about it & for some reason I launch into a story about the time I almost quit the fourth grade talent show, but instead I served up some of the finest Michael Jackson lip-syncing any one clad in a pink tutu has pulled off . . . ever. You’ll stare at me blankly wondering: this relates to me how? Because! I am trying to tell you to take a risk, to go for it! I just always have to arrive at the point by detouring through a story. Annoying, I know, but the truth is – I am listening – this is just how I relate. Stories are how I make sense of the past & how I navigate the present.

My beloved English teacher liked to quote “Past is prologue,” & I believed her.  I was always the girl living in a dream, a book, or a downright daze. I lived in the past, recalling events, re-hashing their meaning & like a neurotic soothsayer I was trying to tell the future based on a story from the past. I believed I was a character stuck in the somewhat gloomy story that life had handed me.

I arrived in Adulthood with one eye gazing at my past & the other trying to squint into my future, where I promptly ran smack into a wall. Okay, so all those guru types may be on to something when they go on & on about being Present.  So here I am, living right here & now, in the present & I’ve still got more stories then a Southern Granny or a fly on the wall at a whorehouse – well, probably not.  The difference is now I figure that while our past may inform our present, it certainly does not dictate how our story will go.

The following are but a few stories about the big things, like love & happiness.