Time Helps With Story Telling

By Peter Bowden


He sat at the end of the dock with the sun falling like honey on the lake. His grandson had asked him again to tell the story—the one about the war, or the mountain, or the girl with red hair, they all blurred now. But he told it different this time. Softer. As if the edges had worn down with the years, and the parts that once shouted now only whispered.

When the boy asked, “Why would you tell the story that way?” he only smiled and skipped a stone. Because sometimes, he thought, the truth lives not in the facts but in the way you fold them. Like sheets in an old cedar chest—creased, fragrant, a little yellowed. He didn’t want to tell it the way it happened. He wanted to tell it the way it felt.

“Maybe because I remember it different now,” he finally said. “Or maybe because some things don’t need to hurt every time you say them out loud.” The boy looked at him, not sure he understood. But he would. One day. When the sun had aged him too, and the lake was a memory, and he’d be the one asked to tell it again.

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