Chapter One: I Am Born

     Just like Charles Dickens' novel David Copperfield, all of our stories begin with this one simple, straightforward fact.  Where we go from there depends on a million different things: where we were born, who were our parents, our siblings, our neighbors, friends, relatives, teachers.  What are our talents, who do we love, what can we do.  But the fact of being born is the one thing we all have in common, along with, of course, its corollary.

     At some point, most of us in considering the fact that we were born also get around to wondering about why.  Sometimes the question takes the form of existential crisis, but it also comes up in simpler settings, such as when we're deciding whether to be a nurse or an auto mechanic or a college professor.  What we do helps define us, helps answer the question of why we're here.

      As I get older, the answer for me has refined down to this:  I am here to collect, and tell, stories.  Other things are important to me, especially my family, but story telling infuses everything I do and the way I see the world.  I'm always on the lookout for a good story -- especially a funny one -- and if someone tells one, I not only remember it, I repeat it.  I know stories from my childhood, my children's childhoods, the childhoods of people I met only as adults.  I remember stories from books, plays, movies.  I remember stories told by my grandmother's best friend, Edie, sitting on her front porch on a hot summer day in White Post, Virginia, and one last week from the local supermarket.  Stories are everywhere, and I love them.  They are what I am, and why I'm here.

     In this blog, some posts will be stories and some about the mechanics of stories, including some outliers such as why a quilt or a gingerbread house can be a story.  I'll also include occasional quotations that I find helpful, interesting, or funny.  Here's hoping that if you love stories, too, you'll write and tell me what you think.