“You know, Ross, you forget the stories until you start visiting like this.” Ross Gay, Inciting Joy, p. 45

                I’ve been thinking today about how so much of a story is sharing the time for a story to bloom. Some of my training argues otherwise: I’ve heard lots of people talk about writing as though you have no time, writing as though your reader has no time, writing as though attention is a scarce commodity and at any moment you might decide that I’m not worth yours. Writing hustle. And I understand that. I understand why. But I’m also visiting my family, and after dinner we stepped into the backyard, feeling the wind and noticing the deepening sky. Then we came back inside: dinner to clean up, leftovers to put away. But the thing is, sometimes we don’t come in so quickly. Sometimes we stand there. I feel stories scattering like light through shifting leaves. I feel the kind of visiting that’s timeless, inasmuch as it’s not counting minutes, seconds, words. Opening in that dappled light are memories and misadventures, questions and curiosities, hopes and uncertainties. And so today I’m going to stop writing, here, and ask my family if we want to step back out and visit a bit. Not to make the stories come alive, but to remember they’re alive, and to visit long enough to stop running from them.