@inazumaelle replied to your post “Every so often I look at my life and the stories I know of my parents’...”
That sounds interesting to say the least! D’you have any stories you're willing to share?
You are the son of a Prussian Jewish man and an Irish Catholic woman, both of whom immigrated to England. Your parents died when you were young, so you were raised by your grandfather, your mother’s father. When you are a grown man, you are caught poaching, and you are given a choice: jail or the army.
You choose the army.
Somehow, you end up in the Royal Scots. Then there is a war. A Great War.
You fight in that war, and you come home. And when you come home, you are stationed in Scotland - you are to help with guarding the coal mines.
One night, you come across a young woman. She is an Irish-Scot and a single mother. She is stealing coal.
You should arrest her. This is your job.
You don’t. You let her go. You don’t tell anyone.
Over half a century later, your great-great-granddaughter will hear the story of how you met your wife, her great-great-grandmother, and express that she didn’t know such a story could exist in reality.
You are a young woman from the Highlands of Scotland. Your family is well off by anyone’s standards - not gentry, no, but they own coal mines, plural. There is money in the family and this is what you are used to.
You fall in love with a working class man.
Your family disapproves greatly.
You decide you don’t care how much they disapprove - you are in love and you are getting married. Your family disinherit you for marrying below your station.
Life goes on and you and your husband live happily and have children, who grow up to have children of their own, and so forth.
In a century’s time, you will have a great-great-grandson who is studying to become a rocket scientist.
You are a twenty year old Scotswoman who spent the first fourteen years of her life on the move. You are home now, have been for a while, and you are a University student. You still live with your family, you commute to class (this won’t be a workable arrangement for much longer, but you cling to it while you can).
One day, on your way home, a woman sits across from you on the bus. She is carrying a bundle of handpicked daffodils, wrapped in a plastic bag. You take little note of this, because it is Spring and there are daffodils everywhere.
And then, as people on buses are sometimes wont to do, the woman engages you in conversation. You are perfectly happy to engage in return, as she seems nice and you like talking to people! You both talk about your lives, you tell her what you are studying (media) and your passions (storytelling. you are a storyteller to your core) and your family, who you love dearly, and she tells you about her nieces and why she is on the bus this afternoon and how good it is to see younger people so passionate about their work. It is a pleasant conversation and before either of you realise it, the bus has reached her stop.
She stands to leave, and then pauses. She turns back to you and hands you the daffodils she has been carrying.
“I don’t need these,” she tells you, with a twinkle in her eye “But maybe you can get some use from them. Maybe put them in one of your stories?”
You live a life where this kind of thing just happens to you