About my blissful exuberance when I was eight or nine and was selected to ride in a boat pulled by dolphins.

I want to stay saturated in that pure, brilliant pink and green happiness as the dolphins flukes their way around the pool, me in the rowboat towing behind, and I was a brilliant star. A solar system. A spiral galaxy that flung light into all of the dim corners of the amphitheater.

I want my story to be about the blissful, safe peace at Mermaid Rock. When I, bundled up in my cheap jeans, sat on a boulder spooning the glacial lake and dreaming of a lonely mermaid slipping from the water to sit in a tiny wedge of a rock island and comb her dark green-brown hair.

I want my story to be about the laughter of the near daily rubber band wars or paper ball fights or silly YouTube videos I shared with my AP Lit students. I want my story to be about the thrill of excitement when we dumped the recycling bin and crumpled up the paper or swept through my classroom’s corners searching for stray rubber bands and, just when we were supposed to be serious or intelligent we were flinging paper balls or snapping rubber bands at each other. And it was wild laughter and supernova happiness and grades didn’t matter.

I want my story to be about the time my oldest child who was maybe five and served communion to their father. I want the story to focus on how we sat in the back of the new worship hall/gymnasium and the setting sun shone through the long windows and ricocheted off the back of my husband’s balding head and the television camera which was behind the congregation and live streaming the service was saturated by the haloed glare beaming from my husband’s head. And. In the end. My oldest child who was only five held the chalice for the communion juice and soberly stated how “This is the blood of Jesus, shed for you.” And the said this to me. And to their father/my husband.

I want my story to be about the images and metaphors and motifs and symbols that I carry in my right pocket. I want my story to be about poetry scrawled on paper that is then folded into fourths and stowed in my pocket because I must write. I must always write. I must always have the ability to write and be part of the written world.

I want my story to be about good and best intentions that frequently trip on themselves and make me crash, face first, into the dirt. I want my story to be about the mountain overlooks I stood at and looked over the edge so I could star I to the valley. Or at the rest of the mountain ridges that looked like surfacing humpback whales.

I want my story to be about the time I stopped apologizing and swapped my anxiety and loathing for confidence. Even if it is temporary because old habits never die.

I want my story to be about the time I became a grave digger so I could bury my anxieties and insecurities and pain and then exhume them to make peace with them only to bury them again but maybe exhume them because life is cyclical and I am not a caterpillar emerging from her fibrous cocoon and permanently leaving the past behind.

I want my story to be about joy. Forgiveness. Hiking past my limits and surrendering with grace. Of dogs and dolphins and the random cat and my marriage and my two children and my family and my family and of words and poetry and short stories and novels and literary dreams.

I want my story to be about ….