"In the mild air of spring they were singing cheerfully, sweetly, as though to keep her company on the first morning of her life that she, Omakayas, knew the truth of her past. She was the girl from Spirit Island. She lived in a birchbark house. This was the first day of the journey on which she would find out the truth of her future, who she was." from The Birchbark House by Louise Erdrich

This book is a story of many many things, but what struck me particularily is the vision of our life not being straight lines from birth to death, or birth to any point in between--but that life is circular. It rolls back on itself in a way that is facinating. It also touches what has long interested me, and that is personal myth. We all have personal stories, experiences that happened to us that are at the core of who we are. Omakayas had a story that she didn't know and yet much of her life moved from that story forward, that circled back again and again until she finally learned the truth of her story. From that day she moved forward to find out what the rest of the story of her would be. These moments that are woven into our being are very important and I like to think of them as touchstone moments. When Old Tallow told Omakayas the story of how she came to be a two year old alone on an island of dead people--her entire life wiped out by small pox and her left to lay by her dead mother--her soul remembered even though her mind didn't. Later in her life, she met with smallpox yet again when a man entered the village of her new family. Erdrich writes, "What happened changed the way Omakayas and her family lived from them on. A visitor entered." We have all had those moments that changed our lives in far reaching ways. I can think of any number of them...my trip to Africa and subsequent bout with Malaria, the birth of my son and the long road of his illness, the birth of my daughter and the lessons of relearning joy she taught me, the crossroads that determined the course of my marriage and my family, walking into the emergancy room and seeing my husband after falling and breaking his back...these moments were moments that either at the time, or later, I could look back and know that my life took a different path than it was running on.

I know this has been an incoherent babble, but the gist of the matter that I have been mulling is that time is circular and that moments in our life are life changing and make up our personal stories, and that it is important to come to terms with life changing moments because you will retouch on them over and over in your life in ways and times you least expect.