What the Wind Knows

by Amy Harmon

The wind you hear is the same wind that has always blown. The rain that falls is the same rain. Over and over, round and round, like a giant circle. The wind and the waves have been present since time began. The rocks and stars too. But the rocks don’t speak, and the stars are too far away to tell us what they know.”

But the wind and water know all the earth’s secrets. They’ve seen and heard all that has ever been said or done. And if you listen, they will tell you all the stories and sing every song. The stories of everyone who has ever lived. Millions and millions of lives. Millions and millions of stories.”

I was a little girl with a tied tongue and an overly active imagination,

“Tragedy makes for great stories, but I’d much rather your story—the one you live, not the ones you write—be filled with joy. Don’t revel in tragedy, Annie. Rejoice in love. And once you find it, don’t let it go. In the end, it is the one thing you won’t regret,”

I loved churches the way I loved cemeteries and books. All three were markers of humanity, of time, of life.

We were specks, bits of glass and dust. We were as numerous as the sands that lined the strand, one unrecognizable from the other. We were born; we lived; we died. And the cycle continued endlessly on. So many lives lived. And when we died, we simply vanished. A few generations would go by. And no one would know we even were. No one would remember the color of our eyes or the passion that raged inside us. Eventually, we all became stones in the grass, moss-covered monuments, and sometimes . . . not even that.

“Do you miss him?” “Not anymore,” I said, and my voice quaked. “Why?” He was shocked the way I had been once, long ago. “Because he is still with me,” I whispered, repeating the words my grandfather had said to me as he’d rocked me in his arms. And suddenly the world shifted and the light dawned, and I wondered if my grandfather had known who I was all along.