An Elusive Beginning

“Beginnings are elusive things. Just when you think you have hold of one, you look back and see another, earlier beginning, and an earlier one before that.” From Mudbound by Hillary Jordan.

I love reading. I love finding myself within the confines of a story written by a stranger about imaginary beings that happen to feel the way I do. The human condition exposed. I find this an enormous gift and revere authors who are able to do it seamlessly and believably. Because I am, for all intents and purposes, a story editor. Whether it be books or scripts, or even a cop – just the facts, ma’am – I look for the instances big and small that have lead people to the situations they find themselves in. For instance, it’s only important if a person chooses to eat the burrito if they gag on a jalapeno and die, or if they are on a diet and wonder why they can’t lose weight. Otherwise, it’s a small decision and merits no further consideration and can, in fact, be cut from the fabric of the story. I view my life in this manner, too. Unless the decision will adversely affect my future, I don’t worry about it. However, unfortunately, one never knows which decisions out of the million of little decisions they make daily will be the one that will cause their own undoing. This line from Mudbound reminded me of the first night of therapy when I tried to tell my doctor the Story of Me.

The Story of Me, it seems, starts not with my own birth but with a great-grandmother who got in the family way without a husband and therefore was married to a widower with two young children. The Story of Me starts with passion and scandal and consequences. It starts with individuals I never knew like a lothario who used my great-grandmother and the man who gave her and her child his name and whom I call great-grandfather though there is nothing to connect me to him. Not blood. Not memories. Nothing. However, the mere fact that these people lived, loved, and did not love have affected three generations of my family. It is one saga that has spawned a series of stories. One decision that has affected my grandmother, her children, and her children’s children.

Think about the choices you make everyday. Big one and little ones. Most days, there will be no consequences. Like the burrito that didn’t kill you or show up on the scale. Most days, your decisions will affect no one but yourself, yes? And yet, when I look back over the course of my life, I see the choices I have made and realize how some of them have had a major impact in my life however small the determination was at the time. Babysitting for that one woman. Playing inside that one afternoon. Losing a silly bar bet. These choices have informed the narrative of my life. While there are great many that had no effect on me at all, there are some that lead to the very experiences that changed me irrevocably. Hindsight is 20/20, but it’s all a little blurry when it’s right in front of your eyes.

And if I have children? Introduce another character into the Story of Me? Well, then I by extension become a part of his or her narrative and the narrative of their children and grandchildren. At which point, the choices I make today could affect people whom I might never know and who won’t know me. I, too, will be reduced to an anecdote repeated in a therapist’s office trying to explain why she does the things she does. Will my story be a comedy or a tragedy in her eyes? I don’t know and probably never will. That determination can only be made by the story editor. I will only be one book in a series of books that she has heard of. An elusive beginning.