Creation myths. Origin stories. Tales of being where the power of the protagonist is embedded in their birth. Lives read backwards so that their outcome seems inevitable from their very beginning.
There is a photograph of me as a very young child that has become the genesis of my narrative. A moment the family has seized on, in the glorious wisdom of hindsight, to mark the origins of my life as a reader and lover of books. In the grainy and aged brown and yellow tones of this photograph, tones that place it as a relic from another time, I am running past the Christmas tree, book clutched in one extended upward arm. My not-yet two year old self is running - you can see the movement in the sweep of my hair - past the scattering of presents and paper and toys, eyes lit, towards someone not caught in the framing of the photograph, running to show them my book. This moment marks the beginning of the mythologising of my life.
And so I have come to wonder from time to time whether there was any other way for my life to have been lived. Would I be me if I weren’t always with a book in my hand or in near-reach, if I weren’t always surrounded by shelves and piles of books, if I weren’t always reading books and searching out new books and encouraging books into the daily rounds of all who enter my sphere? Is there even another way to live? And, even more worryingly, have I done enough to honour this gift I was given? Am I living up to this myth of my own making?
Perhaps tomorrow I will lift down the old photo boxes and search out this picture and come back and add it here.