I don’t know what to say, other than the journey has been weary. To come to a place where I still yearn to tell a story, any story, perhaps even my story…I will not leave this place soon.
There has always been a desire within me to capture an audience’s attention with a good story. I remember in the third grade when we had a guest speaker come into our classroom. She was dressed in buckskins and feathers, and leather bracelets adorned her wrists. Her hair hung like an unravelling nest of spun gold, a mess over her shoulders. I remember the other students and I inching to catch a glimpse of the mystery who was due to arrive, and finally there she was. Her energy entered the room before she did. She talked with her hands, but carefully, with purpose. My third grade teacher had tucked me over to the side of our class’ gathering; he was always aware of how much I liked to talk and interrupt and relate to anyone willing to give me their attention. I think he knew he needed me set aside so I wouldn’t block all the other kids from watching this woman perform. And that’s what she did. She performed. She told us a story. A fable. Something about a bear loving a girl and turning into a spirit in the sky.
I remember this woman telling us after she had finished the fable that this was an example of “oral tradition.” Passing a story down from generation to generation by word of mouth. Learning a place by the stories its people could share.
It turns out my teacher had nothing to worry about that day. I was so awestruck that there was a job for storytellers, that people could desire to hear someone’s stories, that I didn’t move an inch in my seat during the woman’s entire presentation. And the idea that a story about a bear loving a girl turning into a spirit in the sky could be considered true and worthy of an audience…This floored me.
You see, telling stories has often gotten me into trouble. I come from a big family with a lot of kids and a unique set of parents, and I was always trying to make a room for myself in the middle of that large group. (One of the few reasons my parents stopped having kids after the seventh arrived was because we had reached max capacity for our nine-seat suburban.) Stories–often humorful, sometimes sad, always enthusiastic–were the tools I used to carve out that space. But you see, it doesn’t take a child psychologist to see that some people don’t always like the stories that are told from a kid’s perspective. “Kids say the darndest things” is only adorable when it’s not your kid.
I learned to gauge my audiences and my experiences accordingly. Who can I tell this one to? Who will listen? Who will get angry? What does it matter? Will they believe me? Can my story still be true if I include the part where the audience doesn’t believe me?
Today, though, I came to this desk and I felt, “Enough.” Enough with gauging. Enough with pacing. Enough with censoring.
And here we are.
a scribble of jo 