family stories

Last night I witnessed as a family that had been ruptured from outside events reconstructed itself.

They gathered around a table and told stories on themselves. Remember when, remember when, remember when. Mishaps, misadventures, injuries, bad haircuts, all stories of innate humaness, of vulnerability. Someone falls from a tree, a young girl decides to trim her brothers eyelashes, someone thought it was a good idea to ride a bicycle off the roof and onto the trampoline.

They defined themselves as a family, created their own myth, created themselves in the process, defined who they were different from others: like identifying time based on the house they were living in "when did that happen?" "in the main street house," "in the coffee catch house," "in the popcorn house."

I liked being the witness. I watched myself drift off sometimes, the stories are more amusing to the participants than to an outsider, but it was good to hear them none-the-less. Good to hear normalcy return from chaos.