From facts and fragments and anecdotes, I make up a story

The high temperature for Denver on Feb. 18, 1950, was 53 degrees. The low was 22. That's according to the Farmers' Almanac online weather search app.

Anyone familiar with High Plains weather patterns would see nothing unusual in this. Yes, 53 seems pretty warm for mid-February. But not unusual. On Valentine's Day 2019 in Cheyenne, located 100 miles north of Denver along the Front Range, I wore a T-shirt outside as I took out the trash. Sunny, warm, no wind, 55 degrees. During these mid-winter thaws, temps in the 50s can seem like 70s. You can feel spring in the air, even though spring is a long way off and sometimes delivers worse weather than January or February.

Today's temp in Denver will barely break 20. We expect 15 in Cheyenne. Yesterday I forgot my gloves on a trip to the grocery store. Wind chill was so bad that my hands didn't defrost until I grabbed a fresh-baked loaf of Italian bread and held it close. I must have looked odd. An old guy, bundled for winter, leaning against his shopping cart, hugging a loaf of bread, sighing softly.

On this day 69 years ago, my parents were married in Denver. The photos from that day were shot inside, although the photog could have herded everyone out into the sunshine. My parents are young but not that young. Dad had spent his late-teens and early-20s engaged in World War II. He then went to college on the G.I. Bill. He was 26. My mom was 23, a nursing school graduate and a working nurse. The couple looks happy in their photos. Members of the wedding party, brothers and sisters, spouses and friends, smile at the camera. They all have been through a lot, Great Depression and global war, and look ready to take on the world.

It wasn't easy. It never is. All of the people in the photos are gone now. We are left with their frozen images. And memories. I was born exactly ten months later in Denver's Mercy Hospital. Although family stories say I was born in a snowstorm, that's not what's in the Farmers' Almanac. It was clear and sunny. The high temp was 51 and the low 27. A day much like my parents' wedding day. Mom said she was cleaning the oven when she went into labor. She was trying to take her mind off of the waiting. I like the story but have no way to check it out, as happens with many family stories. Time moves on, memory atrophies, and what we think we know is not accurate at all.

We have stories. The stories sustain us. That's what I'm discovering as I research a novel set 100 years ago in Denver. We know some facts. Denver existed. We have maps and census stats. Hundreds migrated to the Mile High City from other places. Four of them were destined to become my grandparents. They didn't know each other at the time but fate threw them together. They married and I can't tell you what the weather was like on those days because I don't know their anniversaries. With a bit of research, I could find out. But that's not the important thing to me. I've always wanted to know why they came to Denver. I know a few things about their trajectories from elsewhere to here. Grandpa Shay, a cavalry officer in World War I, sought medical help for his lungs at Fitzsimons Army Hospital. There, he met Florence Green, an army nurse from Baltimore. They fell in love, were married, and  produced my father in 1923. They are buried together at Fort Logan National Cemetery in southeast Denver. Surgeons removed one of my Grandpa Hett's diseased lungs and told him to get out of Chicago or the winters would kill him. He jumped on a train to the Rockies. Agnes McDermott took a road trip with her sister and gal pals to Colorado in the summer of 1919. She and her sis liked it so much, they returned to southern Ohio, packed up and moved to Denver. My Mom was their second child.

That's how I got to Denver in 1950.

Time plays a trick on us. When we are young, our relatives tell us stories but we are so self-absorbed that we don't listen. Later, when we can appreciate the stories, the tellers are gone. We know only fragments, anecdotes, stories. The rest, we leave to research and DNA tests. The stories are important because, even if they aren't quite true, they can tell us about people's hopes and dreams and sorrows. We may listen more than we think we do. We may absorb the hopes and dreams and sorrows of those people important to us. I like the idea of genetic memory, that the traumas of our ancestors can be passed along via our genes. This is scary if there is a genocide or war or abuse in your family tree. It also may tell us something about why we get beat down by depression or rejection.

Fiction writers have advantages unknown to genealogy buffs. We respect things that can be proved. Nazi Germany invaded Poland on such a date. The U.S. landed on the moon on such a date and such a location (f*** you, conspiracy junkies). But everything else is subject to interpretation. We make things up. We try to get our hard facts right so you believe the fiction. It's not so easy to compose fiction when you base your story on real people. You have to go off-script. Readers often ask, "Is that a true story?" People, even creative people, crave a lived experience. We also like fairy tales. We like to get the bejesus scared out of us by an evil clown that lives in the sewer. By dragons and orcs. By serial killers who enjoy their liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Today is a good day to remind myself that I was produced by people whose life stories are incomplete and will remain a mystery. I know a few fragments. From those, I can build a bigger story that can eventually be called a novel.