Many years ago, my kids and I were in a car accident.

It was an icy winter morning and I was driving them to school.

My van hit a patch of black ice on the highway and I flipped it completely over. It was terrifying. No one was hurt, but to this day, I think about the residual trauma.

The kids and I have talked about the experience through the years, each of us remembering a different aspect.

I usually tell the story this way: we walked away, no one was hurt. And afterwards, I got the kids to class and went home and collapsed. I was teary, and completely shaken.

And then the doorbell rang. It was the UPS man.

I saw him coming, saw him swing out of his truck with a package. And I immediately started sobbing.

I just needed to tell someone.

And he stood there quietly and listened to me. I told him the details and he said he was so sorry. Gave me a huge bear hug.

He stood on the porch with me, this massive guy. And he took the time he probably didn’t have.

And after a while, he asked if I was going to be okay.

I see him these days, Jimmy, driving a different company van. He honks loudly when he passes by. He always has a huge grin on his young black face.

And he gives me the thumbs up.

The memory, or the story of the accident, is still between us.

The story of my accident is what our family now refers to as Mom breaking down in front of the UPS man. Sorta humorous – to take the sting out.

But storytelling changes us.

Storytelling reinforces our values, our emotions, our investment in our lives.

The way we tell it changes over time – reflecting and refracting the core elements.

In years to come, when the 2021 pandemic is over, what story will you tell about it?

But storytelling changes us. Storytelling reinforces our values, our emotions, our investment in our memories.

Will you remember the pivotal moment when the actual reality hit you?

Will you recall the biggest loss you felt?

Memory is a fascinating, elusive thing. Sometimes large, monumental events that we witness are forgotten, while small details are carved deep in our brains.

Why do we remember some things and forget others?

During this pandemic we say things like, I lost everything, I lost a year of my life.

But then someone may say to us, Hey, remember us talking every Friday afternoon on FaceTime? I really looked forward to those calls.

And we create a new story, one of redemption.

We weave together a collective memory of the Covid19 years.

It’s when we come together to reminisce. When we debrief. When we compare notes in order to make some kind of sense.

I believe the pandemic has opened us up to a new kind of vulnerability, a new way to share our lives.

In a funny way, it makes me think a bit about my hens.

Some mornings when I go to gather eggs, I don’t wait for the chicken to hop off the nest, I peek in and watch her.

She pecks at the lavender I’ve tossed in there, she’s arranging and re-arranging it.

She is trying to cover her egg protectively. She wiggles her rump and squats down low, as if she is in for a long wait of incubating.

And then I reach beneath her fluffy butt and find the warm egg. I watch as her beady little eye stares at my thieving hand, and then down at the emptiness beneath her breast.

And I imagine she is wondering did I lay an egg, and if I did, where did it go?

Was it real?

She clucks in a circumspect manner, and sometimes she’ll squat there for hours.

Is she trying to visualize the egg back into existence?

I imagine her egg as a story, a narrative – it is here and gone.

Beginning, middle and end.

It is real and solid, but it is also a permeable thing. With the possibility for all kinds of endings.

But it’s perfection has a shelf life.

And sometimes all we are really left with, like the hen, is the hand full of feathers.

Of course, I tend to be broody too.

But I am mostly trying to retain a positive thread: Yeah, no grocery shopping, no malls, no worrying about going out, or having to be social.

Yeah, I can share my experience of introversion, even depression, now that it is a common thread.

Still, when the arc of this tale starts looking grim, I talk to my husband, to my kids, to my friends – to anyone who’s found a positive storyline.

And we share our histories as a collective: to say, we were here, this is what it was like, we survived.

We recite our truths, even as they are changed over time. They are the narratives that will keep hope alive, even in the darkest of times.

And all along, we will edit and revise.

Edit and revise.

A memory, a story, and maybe even an egg.