Journey to the Unknown Story

Everyone has a story. That’s a pretty basic fact about human existence I think everyone would probably agree with.

We all have somewhere we came from, people we’ve met, loved ones, or things, or moments that have been swept up into the oblivion of the past. And it’s not just memories you’ve experienced directly that create you. It’s years, maybe even decades, of history. Your history. There have been people and places far and wide interlocking, then dispersing only to interlock with someone new, somewhere else, that have all led to the moment you were born. Everyone likes to talk about the past as if it’s something forgotten, untouchable. But really, the past is all around us. It’s rooted in our blood, our street corners, in the ocean’s tide. Even when we look up at the stars, we see light from eons ago, because that’s how long it takes to reach us.

The past and the present? They are not separate entities. If anything, the present is intricately wrapped inside the past. The wrapping of the gift inside. All of these things, when woven together, make us who we are.

You have to have a story, because you’re not a person without one.

So what does that make me?

Everyone has a story, but I don’t. That’s why I’m here, trying to figure it out. Because, like I said, what’s a person without a story?

The river is silent. Even the breeze, shy as it is, makes no noise as it gently pushes on my sail, making it bubble. Maybe somewhere in the green mountainous brush beyond the birds chirp, or the deer rustle the leaves as their heads perk up upon spotting me, but I don’t hear it. Everything is silent. It doesn’t bother me. If anything, it helps keep me focused. Thoughts flood my head, what is the truth? I ask the silent water. Do I really want to find it?

I felt like it was time to know. It was a book that told to me. Not the usual kind, with prophetic words and uplifting themes of hope and an intricately connected human existence. In fact, it wasn’t even a book I found at a store. It was at Esther’s apartment, in one of the boxes her mother gave her. I was helping her look through everything.

“This,” she had told me, “it connects me to them.”

I picked up a handkerchief, embroidered on it the words as you are, surrounded by chrysanthemums.

“To who?” I asked, rubbing the embroidery with my thumb.

“My family. My past.” She pulled out a thick, brown leather book and flipped it open. Polaroids, dipped in sepia tones from age, displayed images of children riding red bicycles, outdated mustaches on men and women in long dresses with their arms draped over their family members in a kitchen. Esther held it out to show me, pointing to every image.

“This is my grandfather, and his father,” she explained. “They came to America, they had nothing. Knew nothing. Not even the language. They busted their asses,” she paused, “And this is them. Right here. I don’t know, it might be stupid, but it’s like I can feel them. When I think things are hard, I just think of what’s in my blood and suddenly, I know I can handle it.”

It wasn’t stupid.

“That’s not stupid,” I said.

Not stupid at all.

In fact, it was such the opposite of stupid that I couldn’t stop thinking about it. How I didn’t have a story, not one like Esther’s. I thought about it on the walk home, in the shower, eating my damn toast in the morning. No story. No story. No past.

Maybe that was why I couldn’t breathe lately. I had no past relatives I could call on for strength. Actually, I didn’t even know if I did.

That’s why I came here.

The River of Self, it’s been called. So far, I had found nothing. Made sense.

Beneath me, the waters displayed images that I don’t recognize. Families eating at a dinner table. A man crossing a bridge in the pouring rain. A World War II nurse aiding an unconscious soldier in the middle of the night. All people’s stories in a menagerie webbed into the very essence of the earth. All ways to stay connected to the past.

This felt pointless. How was I supposed to find myself here? Looking through the maze of memory, of an infinite amount of life that has been lived and hope, just hope, that one of them calls to me? It all felt so...daunting. Alone, on this sailboat, the guide at the water’s edge had told me I didn’t need to learn to sail because the spirit of the water would lead me right. I wished I hadn’t been so trusting of his steady voice, or the way his eyes seemed to possess a thousand of the water’s stories behind them. All I wanted to do was grab the ropes and somehow turn myself around.

Instead, I listened.

I closed my eyes to the rest of the world, to the pasts on the river’s surface and the trees lining it that seemed to glitter in the daylight.

With my eyes closed, the silence around me wrapped me up like a gentle kiss from the Sun. Inhaling, I let myself lean over the boat so the very tips of my fingers could caress the glassy water. There was no noise. Nothing but the backs of my eyelids. My own mind.

Turns out, that was all I needed.

When my hand hit the water, there was nothing. The sensation of the water passing by, laced with mystic beauty, tickled up my fingers to my arm. I zoned in on the way and it seemed to heighten my sense of awareness. Rather, it made me feel more like myself. I was on a boat, but with the water’s touch, I could feel the roots of past ages beneath me, around me, above me. The stories of the people as images in the water came to life upon the touch. I could sense them with me. In me.

Though, I didn’t know them.

I pulled my hand back. Back to myself, alone. These weren’t my stories. I had no story. Those people had families, generations to pass down their legacies to. It felt like the whole world was at the tip of my fingers, but not my world. Not me. I was just a witness, floating along like a stranger to this foreign land of belonging. I felt like my own phot album just then, except mine wasn’t like Esther’s, full of life. Mine was blank. And wet. And terribly alone. 

I sighed and laid down on the boat’s floor, looking up at the clear sky. Two birds flew overhead, silent. I wondered if there was ever anyone who really found what they were looking for when they came on this journey. Was it all a waste? Was I just some minute blip, a mere smudge mark, on the pages of someone else’s book? I pushed away the thought, begging instead for the silence.

It wasn’t a cold silence, like the ones from mothers giving the silent treatment after a rude comment, or from middle schoolers who have decided you aren’t cool enough. This silence was warm. Like an old woman’s eyes when her husband asks her to dance to the song in their heads, the one that played when they met. Or when you’re alone in your car on an empty highway as the sun sets in front of you. That kind of silence is how the river felt, like a nod. A knowing nod to existence, or a nod to the existence of the universe’s vast intricacies. It was the acknowledgement I craved, so I pulled its presence over me like a blanket on a winter’s night. Again, I closed my eyes, but this time, I didn’t listen for the water. I was just... quiet. I just was.

That’s when I heard Esther’s laughter.

My head shot up. Where did that just come from? I thought. My eyes were lethargic, too enthralled with the river’s power to move quickly. It was like I had to drink in every detail of my surroundings before I could will my body to move. Something splashed in front of me. I felt the droplets of the water hit my face. I turned from the side of the boat I had been facing and the sight made my mouth fell open.

Just beyond the boat’s peak stood a cascade of water that had risen above the surface. Like a wave that was caught in a picture at its most ostentatious level, except unlike a picture, this wave seemed to breathe. It seemed alive. I couldn’t move, though my heart didn’t race. I wasn’t sweating in my underarms like I do with my usual anxiety crises. I just stared, silent, and, somehow, I felt it stared back.

The wave let out a fluid motion, almost like a nod. I felt my neck move then, keeping my wide eyes on it as I gave a slight nod back.

Suddenly, there was no more silence.

The wave became an immersive movie screen. This is it. I was finally going to know who I was. The air around me warmed.

The first image was of me and Mr. Bouras from the coffee shop below my apartment, talking about his granddaughter’s dance recital. The music in the background - jazz, always jazz- danced into my ears. Then, the wave’s display molted into one of me at school when I was young, sitting at the table with Stewart Rotkin, who always smelled like his parents’ cigarette smoke and never seemed to fit in. I had always thought he had a kind smile.

What was happening? This wasn’t my family’s past, it was mine.

More images and scenes came, all sporadic and all showing my times and moments throughout my life. The moment Esther and I met at college. The night where we got lost in the city and ended up sitting on the side of the road, spilling secrets, and becoming best friends. My mom, splurging and taking the two of us to the movies after a big waitressing tip. Mrs. Bouras, holding my hand as I buried my beautiful mother in the field where she had always talked about building her dream house one day.

A tear slid down my face as I watched my life unfurl in front of me. The next image showed up, this one brighter than the last ones.

Esther held a picture of the two of us at her birthday party two months ago, arms slung around each other and laughing with ridiculous cone hats on our heads. She was in her apartment, on her couch. She took the image and placed it in a book. A scrapbook. Our picture was the first one in it. She uncapped a Sharpie and wrote under it: Sisters don’t let each other celebrate alone.

Sisters. We were sisters. How had I never thought about this before? Sisters. Family. The wave revealed the last scene. It was of me on that fateful day when I first saw Esther’s family photo album. Except, this wasn’t that exact moment. It was me, holding the handkerchief that came from the box of Esther’s family history. The wave focused in closer, and closer, until I could read it once again. As you are. That’s when I realized.

The story has just begun.