We know about the complexities of "cultural narrative" but when you get right down to it, we are Stories. We have our own, braided into our family's, our friend's, our community's, our history's, our oligarch's. Why do you tell the Stories you tell? The ones you repeat? The ones everyone knows. The ones your partner can see coming. The ones you have locked and loaded. To entertain? To be relevant? To push an agenda--maybe not even your own?
When I taught playwriting to underserved teens in Chicago one of our first lessons was about morals and themes. We discussed what kind of bedtime Story might be useful to tell a hypothetical rambunctious child. The students chirped, tales about jumping on sofas and breaking vases. I asked what narratives the students, as South Side high schoolers, don't like. "That Mexicans are lazy!" a guy announced. The class was like YEAH. So, I asked, what if we wrote a Story about a lazy bee who never gathered honey? To teach children to finish their homework? How about that? The class had no qualms. I added, now what if I named that bee Maria Sophia Garcia? NO, they shouted! Sometimes I think about the Stories I love and ask myself what they're saying. I rewatched one of my so-called favorite movies recently to find it still incredible and entertaining but in some ways actually majorly opposed to my values.
In college I learned there may actually be just two Stories: Boy Meets Girl and Jesus. Or, some would argue, A Stranger Comes to Town. Lately I tend to think it's Mother or Father. Which is coincidental (or, not at all) because I learned to tell Stories from my parents.
As a journalist, my dad spent his whole life pretty overtly telling Stories. Other people's, through his own rectangular yellow pad. My dad was often on the move when I was younger. Headed to events or the police station or local board meetings. Then he'd sit at the computer, seemingly tortured, tapping away. As I got older I basically never heard from him without also hearing about someone else's Story--maybe a baker or a teacher or a nurse or a consignment shop owner or an architect he met on a plane. Sometimes a text went along with the anecdote, but sometimes it was only news unfit to print. My favorite memory of my dad is probably the Thanksgiving he chose to write about some pantry service group of women who would be in the Christmas parade, zooming with choreographed grocery carts. We watched the marching band and floats together from the sidewalk, but when the gals with their carts whizzed by he took off down the street after them. I could hear him shout, "HELLO C____ S______ WITH THE DAILY TIMES!" I watched his hat get smaller and smaller. Later we met in the park to watch the trees light up.
It's true he'll try to get the scoop on anyone. We've basically never had a waitress escape my dad's questioning. She'll stop by to top off his coffee and he'll slip a "so where are you from" in. "How are they treating you here?" is another staple. We stopped to talk to a guy in the Cracker Barrel parking lot. We stopped to get the skinny on each card table at the farmer's market. Any shop window can be peered in. But also, there are Dad's Stories. The one about the garage and the one about the cactus and the one about the me and my stuffed animals. Sometimes he'll even ask if he's told me about something, I will say yes, and he will still tell me. I've learned to think of these little globs of history as somehow significant, and I do ask myself why and what they prove.
My mom also has her Stories. I have heard some over and over and some never before. I would say common themes tend to be efficiency, good deals, a twist, doing the right thing, and suspicion. She observes what people say and do and later reflects on who might be a snake. Her Chicago accent very thick and she narrows her eyes and starts with a specific see. It took me many years to recognize she is not a documentarian, but an author--just a different kind. She will report on a fact but twirl in some findings. There is great wisdom I've discovered from these Stories. Not far off from magical realism or historical fiction. The world becomes a paper backdrop and paper dolls with which to exemplify one's own viewpoints. I remember she told me the Story of a middle school teacher marking her test wrong. Later she found out she was right. "Thus began my lifelong journey as a skeptic," she said. We laughed, but where was the joke?
I get my nosiness from my dad, but I get my ability to retell a day's Story from my mom. She basks in little gratitude breaks. After every outing she recaps how we did it just right, or maybe how we'd do it differently if we did it again. At the end of vacation nights we like to reminisce about all we didn't know when we woke up. All we couldn't have guessed! Everything is a little book. You'd think we were reimagining a trip from years ago, when the activity was, in fact, hours ago. My mom will spend five minutes regaling me with how we found a perfect parking spot, even if I was in the the one driving. I think it's nice to know things are nice while they are nice. I like nice Stories. I think we could use more of them.
Both my parents' Stories have been known to change. A historian and Storyteller myself, sometimes these revisions give me pause. What is even true if Stories change? Especially if Stories are us. Then again, then again, what will be true if we don't change? And if we are changing and we are Stories, how could I expect anything different?
