unravelling

I can hear them already - let's go, let's go get to the story already. At 4 and 7 they expect that the story will start and stop - neatly wrapped up with a string and a moral to boot.

But it is not like that. The story is just a story. Does it begin with her, or with me? When does it start - when she was born, when I was born, when she denied being sick, when she was at the dinner table with IV's hanging from her arm, or maybe when God called her bluff? I don't know.

Maybe it's not a story at all, just an unravelling of memories, of history, of life. Like tugging at a loose string on a scarf, there is not just one memory that comes loose, the whole thing unravells, until you are left with a tangly ball of yarn with no beginning and no end.

Sometimes it is like that. And when you finally find the begining of the string you realize you have to untangle the rest and learn to knit if you ever want that damn scarf back.