Where Story Begins: Finding Inspiration in Small, Unexpected Moments
The Moments Where Story Begins
As waiting rooms go, this one on the tenth floor of Massachusetts General Hospital in downtown Boston is pleasant. There are tables and chairs, snacks and bottled water, even an espresso machine. I’ve helped myself to water and eaten a small bag of roasted edamame. Now I wait for my husband, Tom.
We scheduled our annual physicals for the same day, back-to-back, so that we could travel together. I’ve already finished meeting with our doctor, and now Tom is in with her.
I’ve set aside the book I brought along, as it isn’t distracting me from my impatience. I just want to leave the hospital.
Tired of sitting, I stand and look out the windows at the grayish-white winter sky and the roofs of neighboring buildings, all likely part of the hospital’s expanding web. I step closer to one of the windows, touch my forehead to the glass so that I can look downward.
And that’s where I see her.
Story can begin with a glance at something unexpected that holds your attention.
The woman stands surrounded by what looks like a loading dock on one side and two driveways, one that leads into a covered area, perhaps the entrance to another hospital building. The other driveway descends from what might be a garage, its door closed. I wonder why the woman is in this spot. There are no places to sit, nothing that would lead anyone to linger, not even on the loveliest of spring days.
She wears a down jacket and a wool hat and has what looks like a large knapsack on wheels within reach. From the bag, she draws a handful of seeds and scatters them to waiting rock pigeons. A few brash seagulls swoop down to help themselves to the food. The pigeons and seagulls seem to have appeared out of nowhere, and I find myself wondering if they were waiting for her.
Is her offering part of a daily ritual? What is she to these birds, and what do they mean to her?
Seeing the Ordinary as the Beginning of Story
These pigeons scavenging ten floors down from where I stand are familiar to me from the city parks of my childhood. I never felt inclined to feed them, as they pecked at the pavement in search of nourishment. Occasionally, someone tossed a crust of bread or emptied the last crumbs from a bag of potato chips. In response, the birds surged forward, frantic to claim these leavings. An avian mob. Once, I heard someone describe them as flying rats.
As if to challenge my disparaging assessment, two pigeons suddenly appear on the windowsill. My presence doesn’t alarm them. I have the sense they’ve arrived so that I can take a close look. I notice their blue-gray feathers and the black bars on their wings. The feathers at their throats are an iridescent green and purple. The pigeons have surprising orange eyes.
Eventually they fly away and when I look again for the woman, she’s gone.
I have forgotten my earlier impatience.
I may return to the woman and the birds at some point with the goal of inventing a story. Or this brief encounter—something that lasted only a few minutes—may become the beginning of something more personal, perhaps a meditation on loneliness or the ways in which beauty is found in surprising places when we look closely.
Memory and Longing at the Beginning of Story
Story can begin with the scent of honeysuckle and the way its sweetness transports you to an early summer evening in the backyard of your childhood. Or, it can start with the view of a tree’s winter branches, darkening against the purples and gray of the sky as day ends and night begins. The senses evoke memories, and those can be the catalyst for narrative.
An object—something you keep in memory of something or someone—can function as the gateway to a story. I keep one of my father’s old Hanes t-shirts in a box in my closet. The grayish-white fabric has a small tear in it, the shirt itself smaller than my memory of him. I tell myself it holds his scent.
Longing drives my efforts to write about my father, as though I might create an intimacy on the page that we never enjoyed while he lived.
Perhaps longing is where all stories begin.