Sharing Stories (Weldon)

This afternoon I talk with an architecture student currently living in Boston. Our conversation is wide-ranging, from comparing how many people around us are wearing masks to a lively discussion about building design. He’s just beginning to talk about his childhood in Cape Verde when the call becomes scratchy, then cuts off. I’m sorry to miss the stories he was about to tell. During these surreal times, stories mean more to me than ever.

Over the last few months my in-box and social media feeds have taken on an annoyingly sparkly flavor. Amplify your creative life!  Get organized! Sign up for new online programs! I’m proud of friends who have leaped ahead during these months of pandemic restrictions, including two who have recently sent off manuscripts. This ongoing global anguish affects us all differently. We’re dealing in our own ways with anger, fear, loneliness, and too, a renewed joy in simple pleasures. We’re reexamining entrenched systems that ensure some people suffer far more than others. Many of us are struggling to get by without paychecks. It’s overwhelming.     

I’ve written very little these last few months. I can’t seem to muster the enthusiasm. I certainly haven’t cleaned out cupboards. The house is quiet: no weekly Sunday meals with extended family, no friends over. Due to diagnoses putting us at greater risk from Covid-19, my husband and I have been almost entirely self-isolating since March 16th. Separated from people I love, I find myself drawn to other ways of connecting. I’ve been baking for strangers and sending snail mail. I’ve also been sharing stories with someone new nearly every day thanks to Quarantine Chat. Created by artists Danielle Basking and Max Hawkins, Quarantine Chat offers “serendipitous connections with people around the world.”

One of the first Quarantine Chat calls I answered, back in March, paired me with an older gentleman in Canada who was staying at his fishing cabin. He’d just come in from what he said would be his last ice fishing of the season. He reported that, once again, he didn’t catch anything. I asked how often his ice fishing was successful. “It’s always successful, in that I get outside for a few hours of peace,” he said. “But it’s 100 percent unsuccessful if you mean catching anything after decades of trying.” His good cheer couldn’t help but cheer me.

I’ve talked to people in Spain, Ireland, Wales, Italy, Republic of Georgia, Austria, Israel, Columbia, and many US states. Among them are a teacher, restaurant owner, graphic artist, stay-at-home dad, graduate student, insurance broker, teenaged musician, set designer. We talk about what we can see out our windows, how our plans have changed, what worries us most, what we’re having for supper. It’s like any conversation, except it’s easier to get past the superficial.

In April I talked with a retired veteran who said he was struggling with anxiety, especially for his two daughters. I asked if he had a family story that made him feel he and his kids will get through this. He told me about his grandmother, who was the first Black woman in their city to become a bus driver. He called her a “little powerhouse of a lady.” He said she was a woman of faith who also took “no guff” from anybody. Once, he said, she was robbed as she was walking to the side entrance of her apartment building. She never carried a purse, but pulled a worn Bible out of her coat pocket and told the desperate young man holding a knife, “Take this, it has treasure inside.” He grabbed it and ran off, assuming she had money stuffed in its pages. She hurried after him. When he threw it down after rifling it through, she picked it up moments later. The police declined her offer to dust it for finger prints. The veteran said he had lots of stories about his grandmother and realized he hadn’t told them to his daughters. “I see her in my girls,” he said. “They’ve got her fight and her big heart.”

When he heard I couldn’t write, he suggested I write about his story. Wise advice indeed. Stories open us to the shared meaning inside tragedy, confusion, and compassion. Stories heal us. I’m convinced we can repair many of our country’s divides by truly listening to each others’ stories.    

“I believe with all my hoary heart that stories save lives, and the telling and hearing of them is a holy thing, powerful far beyond our ken, sacramental, crucial, nutritious; without the sea of stories in which we swim we would wither and die; we are here for each other, to touch and be touched, to lose our tempers and beg forgiveness, to listen and to tell, to hail and farewell, to laugh and to snarl, to use words as knives and caresses, to puncture lies and to heal what is broken.”    ~Brian Doyle   

Laura Grace Weldon is the author of three books, most recently the poetry collection Blackbird (Grayson Books, 2019). She works as a book editor and teaches writing. Laura and her husband live on a small farm where in non-pandemic times they host art parties, house concerts, and odd dinners.