1:5 – A Broken Heart

I have a great story to tell you. It’s a story of how evil came into the world in which we live.

Once on an island off the coast of Vancouver there was a family on summer vacation. In this family there was a father, a mother, and their three daughters. They were staying in a small log cabin with a beautiful view of the ocean and mountains.

At the island the parents and their daughters enjoyed kayaking, swimming, lounging, and sitting around the table after dinner with their charcoal barbecue making s’mores with the best chocolate in the world: Cadbury.

One night the mother decided to tell the father and their three daughters a story. She had been doing this for years and they all loved hearing the stories she told them. It was hard to know if she was making them up or telling stories she had heard as a child, but the daughters always believed the stories were real even if they weren’t.

The mother started off her story by explaining the characters. In this story there was a man, a woman, and their two kids. The man and woman met after university. They met because they both were trying to start working as veterinarians and crossed paths when they were applying for jobs. The man was married and the woman had been in a relationship for over seven years. But when they saw each other, and started to get to know each other, they ended up leaving their pasts behind and got married two years later.

“Now,” she said, “I should mention the man was an only child and the woman came from a large family.” She went on to explain that the man had not grown up with anyone but himself and the friendly relationships he developed occasionally whereas the woman had always had her siblings as her best friends.

One night the man decided to risk his relationship with the woman and seek out a woman from his past. He felt unappreciated in his marriage and thought that having lunch with someone he used to know wouldn’t be detrimental but would maybe lighten his mood. The woman found out that he was pursuing someone else and she stopped trusting the man, but she couldn’t stop loving him. She went into one of her daughter’s rooms each night and crawled into her bed, crying for hours and hours until the sun rose in the morning.

The daughter would ask her mom if there was anything she could do. She would ask her mom why she was crying and usually her mom wouldn’t respond. But one morning the woman warned her daughter as she said “Hun please be careful with who you choose to live your life with. Don’t take for granted the relationships you have and don’t be unfaithful to the ones you love. Playing with someone’s heart will not bring you happiness but it will ruin your world. Fairytales aren’t real and all those princesses and their handsome princes you love are just made up.”

The woman left her daughter’s room after stating her warning. But she didn’t just leave the room, the woman left her world. She left the house without another word and didn’t come back. The daughters grew up living with their father and felt betrayed by their mother. They didn’t know much about why their parents weren’t together anymore or why their mother had left other than the warning she had left one of her daughter’s with. The daughter who heard the warning told her younger sister and both of them became unable to imagine a world filled with the beautiful characters and stories of the fairytales they grew up reading.

Sitting around the fire the three daughters faces looked horrified. They were still, with their mouths open and tears running down their rosy cheeks. One daughter cried “take it back mom! Take back the story. I don’t want to believe that hearts can be broken and moms can leave their children.” The mother, having finished her story, kissed her three daughters on their foreheads and said “evil came into this world when people started breaking hearts.”

As the mother left the deck to go inside, the daughters heard her mumble under her breath about the innocence of childhood. The daughters had wished their mother would take back the story, but once a story has been told it cannot be taken back.

So you have to be careful with the stories you tell. And you have to watch out for the stories you are told (King 10).

Commentary:

I told my fiancé my story last night when we were about to sleep. He picked up that I used some characters and previous situations from my own life in the story. He thought that evil coming into the world through the act of breaking a heart was interesting because it perhaps makes it more relatable to more people because having an experience of being heart broken, romantically or not, is a common experience. He had never thought of stories as being permanent, but he realized through this story that once something is said it cannot be taken back because it soon takes effect on feelings, values, and perceptions.

It was an interesting experience speaking my story out loud. Before doing so I listened to Thomas King’s The Truth about Stories Part 1 on youtube. I also read his story about evil in the novel, but I found listening to him read the story aloud helped me to feel more comfortable speaking my own story. I have written a few stories for creative writing classes, but I have never written a story about stories themselves. After listening to Part 1 I wanted to listen to the rest of the novel and found the other parts here. CBC Radio has a description before the sound clips that says: “[b]eginning with Native oral stories, King weaves his way through literature and history, religion and politics, popular culture and social protest, in an effort to make sense of North America’s relationship with its Aboriginal peoples.” This caught my attention because I think it sums up what stories have the potential to do. Thomas King while trying to show the truth about the relationship between North America and its Aboriginal peoples is also showing the impact stories have and emphasizing the effect of what one might have previously assumed are mere words on a page.

Works Cited:

Demiurge. “The Truth About Stories – Thomas King – Lecture 1.” YouTube. YouTube, 31 Jan. 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzXQoZ6pE-M&list=PLXl0aiMiaPjWoGKHynBJ7oCUwcwKTOBPp&index=1. Accessed 22 Sept 2016.

Ideas. “The 2003 CBC Massey Lectures, “The Truth about Stories: A Native Narrative”” CBC Radio-Canada. 2016 CBC/Radio-Canada., 07 Nov. 2003, http://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/the-2003-cbc-massey-lectures-the-truth-about-stories-a-native-narrative-1.2946870. Accessed 22 Sept 2016.

King, Thomas. The Truth About Stories: A Native Narrative. Peterbough:Anansi Press. 2003. Print.

Parkin, Chloe. The View at Mayne Island. Photo, Mayne Island, BC, Canada.