Tales by the Hearth Anyone?

In the darkness, counting breaths, when sleep does not come, where does the mind travel to? Are you lost in the myriad trivialities of the day gone by, or counting all of the pressures of the day to come?

Perhaps you lay there staring through the darkness seeking the red thread that links all of you to - you.

I find, more often than not lately, that I am telling myself new versions of old myths and fairytales. Providing them new twists and turns that somehow bring them into sharper focus for me. I can see the Children of Lir standing on the sea shore as their song dwindles and their shapes transform into swans. I can feel the sea's salty spray as they are swept away from the land and lives they have known. I watch in my mind as Grania puts the sleeping potion into the goblets of the warriors at her father's banquet table to avoid the marriage to the old chieftain. I can see her making her escape with Diarmuid in the dead of that Irish night. I can almost feel the regret he bears for accepting her geasa and breaking his oath of fealty to that same chieftain. The stories spin and weave until I finally drift into slumber.

I wonder if I finish the tales in my sleep. The reckless adventures, the lover's triangles, the bravery of the children as they find their way home. Yet all I can remember in the morning is a sense of ease that surrounds me as I face the new day. I like to believe that somewhere in the retelling, the tales have become softer, the hardships for those travelers also lessened. Perhaps their gift to me has been repaid simply in my remembering them?

I do know this, these grand tales of our ancestors. They are indeed gifts. Curing my insomnia and easing the ache of my days. Perhaps we should take them out of our childhood and dust them off more often.

Who knows what gifts we might uncover as a people were we to share them at our hearths together as they did then?