9.14.2021

A Long Line of Storytellers

Telling stories with words is what I do on a most-days basis. My writer's toolbox 
contains an overheating computer equipped with apps and programs, tattered and 
scattered notepads, and a certain kind of pencil. Words come to me—or I 
hop around on one foot, trying to catch a few out of thin air—and 
I string them together like pearls on a thin thread. It's a sweaty business. 


Some of the women in my line told stories in field-furrowed paragraphs, 
with seed-sown punctuation. Farm wives 
spun tales of glorious seasons of plenty, and grim ones of 
bootstraps and tightened belts. Their story endings depended 
on the crop, the weather, and the goodness of God. 
 
A few spread their tables with another kind of saga, offering
 mashed-potato mountains rising over fried-chicken foothills, neatly
 lapped by a river of gravy. Basket-weave piecrusts and hand-churned ice cream
 spoke welcome, confidence, and a certain sort of love too delicious to decline.

 
Other matriarchs stitched their memoirs with needle and thread. 
Cotton-cloth leftovers and flour-sack scraps pieced together
 and spread over a bed. Its maker read aloud her quilt creation
chapter by chapter, weaving tales prompted by bright-worn shapes:
"I wore this dress to your mother's wedding. 
What a rainy day that was ..."
"See here, your granddad's best church shirt. 
That was an Easter we'd never forget ..."
"Your brother had pajamas in this same pattern. 
I never knew a boy to work so hard at play…" 

One of these needle-and-thread masterpieces blankets my worktable. 
Its stories cushion my elbows as I search for the next word, the sturdiest sentence, 
the perfect turn-of-phrase. 


So you see, I come from a long line of storytellers ... and you do, too.
What sort of tales did your forebearers tell before you began to spin your own?




2 comments:

  1. Beautiful post. My grandmother was a story teller through her letters to her children and grandchildren.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Oh, what a wonderful heritage, Jenny! She must have passed on her gift to you. Thanks for visiting, S.

      Delete

Thank you for taking the time to send your thoughts my way. I love to hear from you!