Stories get repeated. I know I tell the same stories over and over. I enjoy repeating the story of how the waves took our dock apart piece by piece in the storm a week ago Sunday. It's a great story of helplessness in the face of the power of water and of trouble averted as the waves threw the pieces of the dock back onto the shore hardly damaged at all.

That story is a cautionary tale. We had not realized that a big storm was blowing in until it was upon us. We were reminded the bay has a mind of its own.

Since that day, we've heard more stories from other people. I've kayaked along the shore and seen the trees leaning or in the water. A boat sank. Shoreline was eaten away right to the edge of a newly built cabin. Repetitions of our story will now include how lucky we were.

Families tell the same stories over and over. Stories of grandparents connect us with our history. Which stories we tell shape how we think of that family history.

My mother told stories about her mother's skill as a practical nurse. Not that she was officially trained, but she had learned from experience. She was often away caring for someone who was ill, helping at a birth, looking after a fragile new born. While these stories praised a woman who in the early 1900's developed these skills and contributed to the family income, the telling sometimes included the resentment of the youngest girl in the family who was raised by older sisters because Mama was so often away.

Later stories of my mother's mother included her love of cats, too many cats. My mother would never have a cat. This story was embedded in the family memory and meant that my brother, who loves cats, could not have one until he was on his own.

Disagreements happen in families. Sometimes they are resolved and the story told is one of reconciliation. But when the issue becomes entrenched, different people will tell different stories about what caused the tension, what was promised, who lied. These oft repeated stories with themes that don't waver become the concrete that locks in the quarrel.

The stories we listen to influence our actions. We watch CNN quite a bit with its constant blaming of the president for the resurgence of Covid 19 in the US. Sometimes, instead of carefully chosen clips of foolishness, they will show a news conference where he is calm and mostly intelligent, even if saying things I disagree with. I should occasionally listen to Fox news to hear a different perspective. Some stories make him the devil incarnate or a complete idiot.

Our province is taking Covid 19 too seriously in the stories some people tell, and not seriously enough in the stories of others. "We've been lucky in Grey-Bruce; there have not been many cases at all," is said along with descriptions of a life that is easing back toward what was normal. As groups work on the procedures for reopening our church buildings, that story tempts us to be lax. The stories of church events that early on spread the disease are a reminder that these procedures matter.

"Did you hear about the visitor from away who isn't self-quarantining?" is a story told with worry and anger. "Did you hear about that party of young people at a bar?" is a repeated story on the news, from individual's lips. These provide a warning that because some people aren't being careful, "we" have to be vigilant.

I watched a birthday party on a restaurant patio, mostly women about forty to sixty, many who had come a good distance, all standing in tight circles. I don't want to start telling that story, blaming that group for new cases. I worry about xenophobia, attaching our fear of the disease to every stranger.

Talking to an acquaintance, they were laughing at themselves for watching a movie and thinking, "You can't be that close!" As they acknowledged that physical distancing has become a habit for them, we together named the fact that we are going to, someday, have to unlearn that habit.

The stories we choose to repeat form our memory of events and our hope for what is coming. How are we choosing to filter our history right now?

Cathy Hird lives on the traditional territory of the Saugeen Ojibway