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nookishposts · 5 years

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I have decided that 57 and 3/4 years old is a good age to be. And though there will always be things out of my control, I am determined it’s all just going to get better. Universe, are you listening? Actually, I am coming to understand You’ve been the (mostly gentle) voice in my ear all along, people like Brene Brown are bang on and I’m not saying anything new. That doesn’t mean I can’t tell my version. I urge you to do the same.

Remember the days of sitting around a campfire and telling stories? Or laying inside a tent while it rained, desperately trying not to touch the canvas sides for fear that the wrath of an “I told you so!” would cause a huge leak and drown us all in our sleeping bags ? The best storytellers used the shadows and the night sounds as props, incorporating them into a well-spun , mildly creepy yarn of a summer’s night. Firelight dancing on faces, the creaking of a tree branch, scorched knees and chilled backsides, knowing at some point you would have to get up and pee but delaying until the last possible, painful and risky moment to do so: because it meant leaving the circle of warmth, the reassurance of light. Gosh knows, you might miss something. Bugs alighting on the outside of the tent wall..or wait, they are actually OUTside, right? That faint little hiss of a breeze through dried leaves... hopefully not a snake? The sudden overhead flash of light..a dropped flashlight by the outhouse, or the bogeyman from underneath it? And darned certain, right in the middle at the very best part, when you were holding your breath for the next plot twist, some jackass would run a wet finger along the back of your neck and scare the bejesus out of you, and hopefully you’d already attended to that bursting bladder or you could have a whole new story to tell. (Lots of us, right?)

Our stories make us who we are more than anything else. They way that we choose to tell them is also highly definitive of how we feel about ourselves. It’s critical to have bosom pals and sleepovers and frister gatherings, or just one person you know will hear you; somebody that won’t try to “fix” anything , and will join you in the cringing self-deprecatory squirms of recounting the time you peed your jeans. Or farted in church, or laughed at the wrong moment, or went to your first dance in borrowed clothes and split a seam doing the Hustle. We have so much more in common than not, but our differences are just as share-worthy.

Circumstance can be so defining. I know a fellow who was born of deaf parents, but his own hearing was just fine. He agonised over the disloyalty he felt he was showing his parents, by learning to speak in a mostly-hearing world. As a child he felt he had to make a choice between the two, but never felt fully embraced by one or the other. If he brought a hearing friend home after school, he felt like it left his parents out of the conversation, and he was very self-conscious about his ability to act as an interpreter, because when he would translate, either party would take him aside afterward and ask :” Okay, but what did she REALLY say?” as if he had some kind of code he wasn’t supposed to share. Imagine a child in that position. On top of all the other stuff most of us endure as we grow up, he had this dilemma to work through. Of course he did; his parents reminded him he had his own life to live, and a few of his buddies bothered to learn ASL so they could respectfully address his parents. But I think that story could parallel quite a few more. At key moments in our lives we find ourselves feeling neither fish nor fowl, certain that we are “other” for all kinds of reasons. Our language, our clothing, our heritage, our gender, our partnership status...there’s nothing like sitting at a table of divorcees when you have a happy marriage or being looked at sideways because you chose not to have children. Usually, we get through it. In time, we get over what we perceive we are “supposed” to be, and just get on with the business of being, of figuring out who we really are, what we really want, what gives us joy and what we have to offer the world. The fellow who was born hearing to deaf parents? He became among other things, a college level ASL teacher. He decided it was the best way to build a bridge between 2 cultures, and he was the perfectly logical choice to do that. Part of his teaching is telling his story.

Social media can be an extraordinary set of tools in terms of connecting and re-connecting with other people, with vast libraries and galleries, concerts and cultures.When we communicate on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram, even though we are doing in in byte-size pieces, we are telling the nugget of a story. Sometimes, it’s filtered or deliberately skewed in our favour, but so what, it’s a start. Through such forums we merely introduce the idea of a conversation that can be continued either in person, by phone, skype or personal message. Sometimes we just want to share something that made us giggle, inspired us, or made us question it. The trouble starts when somebody decides to take exception to a story without having all the facts. It’s the risk we take having any kind of public face. And let’s face it, the public “truth” has taken one hell of a beating in recent years. Any tool can become a weapon. It’s hard to know what to believe.

The only way to wade through the muck is to make sure we understand as much of our own stories as we can, and draw strength from them. We can hear and respect the differences in our stories and build bridges instead of blowing them up in self-righteous indignation for the amusement of a pot-stirring bandwagon. There’s always a way to ask questions if you have them, be brave enough to be curious without apology. Learn as much as you can by asking for the story. Be prepared to share some of your own when the situation calls for it. Keep safe those things you aren’t ready to share, or find someone who can help you express them in safety and support. Understand that we all need both of those things in varying measures.

Saying I am 57 and 3/4s makes me sound like a distant station on the Harry Potter Hogwarts Railroad Line. In some ways it’s true. I ate up those Harry Potter books as greedily as the kids did, because they were just plan good story-telling, in the manner of the campfire circles: a little spooky, a bit instructive, sometimes funny, and always entertaining. Who wouldn’t want to keep believing in magic given the chance? My life has had it’s magical moments, and there’s lots of track ahead, with new travelling companions at every bend.

There’s a difference between the stories we tell to others and the ones we tell ourselves. No matter how long or how hard we try, we can never truly lie to ourselves for long. By the time I was ready for bi-focals, I found I was also reminded to look a little more clearly into the mirror. Talk about scary stories! (insert rim-shot here) The grey hairs and the wobbly bits are just packaging for all the stories inside, hints of which invariably show up in the wrinkles of my forehead, the upturned corner of my mouth, or the sudden wistfulness in my eyes. We cannot take one look at each other and know all the stories that made us, but we can at a glance see each wonderfully complex human being who has stories to tell, some details of which we might already share. At the ripeness of middle-age, we all understand loss, yearning, joy, angst, and wonder. We know we can survive them, often the wiser for having done so. We sit on the age-crest of being the “wise ones” even though I have heard so many my age express how they feel like in some ways they are just beginning to understand themselves. But that in itself is pretty cool. Because it means we’ve gotten past the stories that weren’t true or derailed us for short bursts and we are in fact seeing the real deal, maybe for the first time. Maybe we are telling our stories again, but in a new way, with some self-appreciation. Think of the scars we bear as chapter titles for the prose that grows in succinctness as we re-read ourselves in that mirror. We’ve done mighty fine, really.

I’d prefer to sit with you by a crackling fire, or at least at the same table rather than through a computer screen as we swap our stories, but if that’s where we meet, that’s just fine too. The details are much richer when you can look someone in the eye, feel their energy, and better understand their inflections. Yet great novelists and writers can make us feel as if they are right there in the room. It’s your story, tell it however you like. Just never believe that it isn’t important, that it isn’t valuable, that it doesn’t matter. We need the strength that is generated around our campfire, bugs and all, if we are ever to get past public lies and remember who we are and what we can overcome, because it is always worth the magic and the wisdom, found in a good, true story.

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