Stoneflowers

We probably all have a story or two that we've never forgotten.   

Mine is called "Stoneflowers" and it came to me freshman year of college from my creative writing professor,  the late John Igo.  Decades after I shared my version with countless students, I called John Igo to check the accuracy of the tale.  My version bore little resemblance to his!  By then, I'd searched online and found no mention of it. I even searched for my creative writing class notes--and nada! (Some of my college students liked the story so much they created a poetry anthology and named it Stoneflowers,  dedicated to me) 

I still prefer my version: 

A man sets out for the village for a wedding or festival or some sort.  On the way he spots the most beautiful flower he's ever seen.  He wants to pick it to put in a vase in his cottage, but he's already late, so he hurries on.  He'll pick it on the way home.

On the way home, he looks desperately for the flower, and all he sees are stones.  He reckons that the flower has turned into a stone.

What I remember is the professor's interpretation of the story: if we see something we want, and if we delay acting on our desire, it won't be there later.  A stone flower, he said, is a symbol of ephemerality.  When we love something, or someone, or some place, we should act on it because nothing lasts forever.

I've encountered stone flowers on road trips.  If someone else is driving and I don't want to ask the driver to stop so I can take a picture, I resolve to take it later, when I'm driving.  I can't count the number of roads not taken again to capture a photo.  And even if I had, the light would be different.  But most importantly, the scene (or row of trees, or children playing, or clothes dancing on a line) is ephemeral. 

I've encountered them on walks--I see a beautiful leaf on the ground; I'll pick it up on my way back.  

Thomas Wolfe's novel, You Can't Go Home Again, tells the story of a writer who writes about his hometown; when he goes "home," the people are so outraged that he's no longer welcome there.

At the time of first meeting these two stories, I was newly married, living in San Antonio, far from my home state.  The stories dovetailed with my awareness  that this was my new life and that I'd only go "home" to visit.  

Someone once said, "We don't just read books, books read us."  This is true of poems, essays, fiction, even quotations that speak to us one way when we're twelve, another when we're 30, another as we continue to age.  Our perspectives are shaped by lines of writing.  The world gets bigger as we engage with imaginative writing.  And maybe--as I did with Stoneflowers--we reshape a story to describe what we're already experiencing but have not yet put into words.