My dad died when I was thirteen years old, so I have a fair amount of memories of him. Most of the memories have always been viewed through a filter of “what if’s.” My father was a Vietnam vet, and I think that this experience re-shaped my father into the person I interacted with the most. Yet it always seemed an identity overlayed upon these glimpses of another self, the one I imagine my mother falling for head over heels. I don’t think I could ever claim to understand my father’s experience, but after reading Tim O’Brien’s “The Things They Carried,” I feel like I at least can understand how this other person ended up superimposed upon my father.
“The Things They Carried” shares insights into the Vietnam experience. In one story, a returned vet imagines sharing the stories he carried back from the war. I think of the times my father watched a war film, or saw the POW/MIA flag, or shared a war story, or saw a trigger photo of Jane Fonda, or one of his other connections to the war. The stories would start to eek out, not to an audience. My brother and I disappeared in those moments. The memories just came. They had a life of their own. They crept through the world, tangling, intertwining. They faded quietly into a corner. Sometimes they hung like a full moon above a still lake, reflecting like a mirror.
Stories.
Today I finished reading Markus Zusak’s “The Book Thief.” The stories. The words. The power they hold… to create, to destroy, to inspire, to share, to stretch, to remember, to breathe life, to sustain.
I am inspired to try my hand at writing again. Yet the beauty of my recent reads makes me feel so unworthy of the task.
But stories, everyone’s stories, are like the child I still hold growing inside of me… stretching his limbs, twisting and wiggling, waiting for the time to enter the world.
