Sometimes I just want to walk up to people and ask them to tell me a story. It doesn’t have to be their life story. In fact, I’d prefer it not be. I want a story about one single moment in time. I want to hear whatever they have to tell me, whatever it is that sticks out in their memory like the streaks in the sapphire sky left by a passing plane. I wonder what they could show me, where they could take me, how much they could make me understand. What would you tell if someone came up to you and asked you that question? What is your story? You know, the one that makes your eyes glaze over and your mouth curl into a smile. The one story that transports you to a place so real that you swear the smell of that place and time is drifting on the breeze.
Yesterday Sarah and I went for a run and ended up atop a mountain/hill that is pretty close to our house. From the summit, it seems that you can see the entire city, although all you really see is maybe one or two tiles in the mosaic that is Athens. The path to the top is paved, although it seems as if they simply poured asphalt over top of gravel, all of which is now falling away in large chunks. It is steep and uneven, but it winds around so that you get views from every angle. From one side you can look out and see the neighborhoods in the area I live. From another side, you can see the Olympic Stadium, currently under construction. And yet another view allows you a glimpse of the sea and even the islands, which seemed to have been painted over by the pink and blue of the sunset. It was the perfect time of day to be there, because light and shadow marbled the entire view and the orange fire of the sun set the whole city aglow.
Having felt caged by the city, the mountain was a perfect escape, and Sarah and I enjoyed it in silent awe before heading down. As we rounded yet another curve, we caught sight of two older women who were climbing up. They must have been over seventy and were both dressed nicely. They wore calf-length skirts made or coarse cotton or wool, long cardigan sweaters that they had probably made themselves and dress shoes. One wore orange-red lipstick. The other wore large glasses. One leaned on a cane for support; the other leaned on the one leaning on the cane. Their hair was white and wispy like freshly picked cotton, and it was pulled back neatly from their faces. I don’t know if they noticed us, but about the time we noticed them, they stepped off the path into the scrub brush. They stared down at the city below, and the one with the cane picked it up and pointed with it. For a while, she held it out, beckoning at something and speaking to her companion. What she said, I don’t know. I wasn’t close enough to hear them, and even had I been, I wouldn’t have understood the language. But I am certain she was telling a story. Maybe she was pointing to a place she had recently been. Maybe she was pointing at something that was no longer even there, but in her memory was as real and fresh as the evening breeze. Maybe the story she was telling took place when she was ten years old and Greece was caught in the middle of a decade of war. Maybe the story she was telling took place only the day before. It doesn’t matter. It was her story. It was a moment that she had captured and was forever hers.
They didn’t stay that way long. Gingerly they moved back onto the path and continued slowly up the mountain. Sarah and I continued down. We passed each other, and said hello. We will probably never meet again. They had their own stories to live and tell, just as we had ours. Yet in that one passing moment, we forever became characters in each other’s stories, perhaps in the stories that we will someday tell if anyone ever asks us for our story.
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