STORIES
Stories
Childhood, family, faith, and the details Esther remembers.
HOW MEMORY RETURNS
Memory does not arrive in order.
A story may begin with a house, a July afternoon, a clean pair of pajamas, or a sentence someone said decades ago.
That is how these pages grow. A person, photograph, season, or ordinary object can bring back something that had gone quiet.
START HERE
01
My Father Dreamed of a Tiger
Before Esther was born, her father dreamed of a tiger. The baby was a girl. The family joke was that perhaps it had been a cat.
This story stops where the memory stops. Nothing has been added to make it complete.
Read the first storyFIRST SEVEN
The first seven stories.
The first memories Esther chose to begin with.
- 01Read story
- 02Read story
- 03Recorded
Back to the Yard in Clean Pajamas
- 04Recorded
Our Family Restaurant
- 05Recorded
Mom, I'm So Happy
- 06Recorded
July, My First Year of Middle School
- 07Recorded
The Happiness Collector
THROUGH THE YEARS
A life still has a timeline.
Childhood, the years with her father, July, school, art, family, faith, and the present sit in their own order even when memory does not.
- 01Childhood
- 02The Years with Father
- 03After July
- 04School and Art
- 05Becoming a Family
- 06Becoming a Writer
- 07A Life with God
- 08The Life Now
WHEN MEMORY RETURNS
Something small can bring a whole scene back.
A smell, a table, a season, an ordinary object. Sometimes that is enough. When another memory returns, it will be written down.
Follow the photographsTHE HAPPINESS COLLECTOR
“I think I may be someone who collects happiness.”
Hard things happened too. Yet laughter is often what comes back first. Both are true.