The stories of my life are too many to tell. My dreams also are many. Sometimes they crowd my days with their familiar images of traveling in strange cities, or of driving along the ocean as it hurls its waves onto the sand. One. Then another. Now the years fold back into themselves until I am once again a child. I sit on the grass under an oak tree, the old one thick with wisteria blossoms hanging from heavy vines twisted around its limbs. My dog Ginger lies with her head in my lap. I stroke her warm body, grateful for her company on this day when I feel alone, and in need of comfort, though the reason for my loneliness will be lost among the many unwritten stories of my life and other people’s lives. Stories told forever so mystery doesn’t blind us all with its naked beauty.

I filled a pitcher to its brim with cool water. The telephone kept ringing. When my father came home from work he removed his tie and unbuttoned the first two buttons of his shirt. These things happened that day but they are not a part of the story, the story that begins with my dog Ginger and me in the shade of the oak tree. I leave Ginger outside while I go in to play with a friend who has come to visit. What my mother is doing is not a part of the story though I hear her running water into the sink. I also hear the rustle of the bamboo in a breeze outside my bedroom window. Or perhaps it’s not a breeze at all, but the sudden rising of starlings that rest there. These things too don’t matter to the story. But matter to life itself, without which the story would have no reason for being. This is a part of my story: the sudden screech of tires on the road. Ginger’s piercing yelp. Then silence. Deep silence holding the terrible truth in its teeth.

I run down the dark hall and out into the front yard. It’s true, what my heart already knew, knew the way such news travels from one to another when love connects them. Ginger has dragged herself to the lawn where she lies dying. Our old Spitz, her faithful companion, has lain his head on her chest. Their breaths become one breath. I am only a bystander, helpless to comfort her as she has comforted me. I see her life leaving her body as I stand broken-hearted while the old dog whimpers. Then he, too, is quiet.

My mother and father are afraid of the grief they see in my eyes. Come, they say quickly. Come. We’ll take you to the skating rink. Think of the music! All that going round and round! Their voices are shrill with fear and I know I must do as they ask. Has my friend gone home? I can’t remember. My memory is filled with hurrying—hurrying into the house, hurrying to get my roller-skates and my skate key, hurrying to the car. And there’s no time at all to look back at Ginger’s dead body lying on the grass near the mimosa, the mimosa that is also a part of this story because its pink puff balls comfort me with their softness.

In the night, when my parents are sleeping, and the moon is high over the bamboo, and the ticking of the clock in the hall is the loudest sound in the house, I turn my bedside lamp on and reach for the pen and paper beside it. There is no need to hurry now, no need to hide the grief that has filled me just as I filled the pitcher with cool water this morning. I take my pen in my hand and begin to write: My Ginger girl/I loved you/every golden curl. I write in the rhyming way I’ve learned at school. And though mine is not a good poem, I have written something true and lyrical. I have discovered for myself that poetry comes from the depths of the heart, and that my own words can calm and comfort me. I have discovered that when the ink of grief dries on the page, what I’m left with is love. I do not articulate these things in my young mind, but I know them in the cells of my body. During these solitary moments in the night I am given this knowledge to take root inside me and grow.

Beloved long-dead mother and father. Beloved dog. I am rapidly approaching my 70th year. Think of the music. Think of the years. Think of the stories that that never stop coming.