The universe is made of stories, not of atoms,” wrote the poet Muriel Rukeyser.
I agree.
I hold stories.
Stories hold me.
One of my favorite memories is of writing and reading stories by flashlight in my bunk bed under my covers when I was supposed to be asleep.
Another is of reading to my boys when they were children each night before they fell asleep.
I read the whole Harry Potter series out loud to them!
I’m at my best as a teacher and a writer when I’m telling a story.
I love it when my students look at me with wide eyes and wondering hearts and say, “Please read another chapter!”
My grandpa was of the tradition of the old farmer storytellers who told stories rocking in rocking chairs on front porches on farms across the south at sunset.
He taught me how to tell stories.
His house had five rooms. He fought with the Marines at Iwo Jima in WWII. After the war, he bought four army barracks and built the house around his family on land his father gave to him.
I remember the first night I spent by myself with my grandpa and grandma in that house.
The guest bedroom was just down the hall from their bedroom. It had two single beds. One bed was beside a bookshelf that held a set of Time Life books titled "How To Fix Anything." He used them to help him fix...anything. The other bed was beside a window that looked out into a fig tree that stood quietly and helpfully next to the house.
I was eight years old. I shared a room at home with my younger brothers, so I was accustomed to having someone in the room with me, used to hearing and feeling a soft breath rise and fall beside me, comforted by the answer "Yes" when I woke in the night and asked, "Is anyone here?"
At my grandparent’s house, I had the guest bedroom all to myself.
They were early birds, my grandparents were. My grandpa often joked and called my grandma a night owl, which meant that she nodded on the couch until 9:30 p.m., the time she went to bed.
He was asleep by 8 p.m.
My Grandpa kissed me on one cheek and went off to bed. An hour and a half later, and my Grandma kissed me on the other as she rose from the couch, took me by the hand, and led me to my room...MY room...not the OUR room of my room at my house but the MY room of theirs.
She tucked me in the bed by the window. "I love you," she whispered and was gone. I heard the floorboards creak softly as she walked lightly to her bed. I heard a grunt as my Grandpa moved over to give up her side of the bed. I heard their breathing, at first in counterpoint and then in harmony, as they drifted off to deep sleep.
My ears were sensitive to the sounds around me, listening for...whatever the ears listen for in the night.
I fell asleep to the sweet sound of my grandparents' breathing.
I woke with a start.
"What was that," I asked out loud. No one answered. There was only silence.
I took a deep breath, rolled on my side, and peeked out the window. I saw a gentle sway in the fig tree and heard a gentle breeze through it's branches but nothing more.
I closed my eyes again.
"Boom," I heard in the distance, from the mountains that rise with grace around us.
I opened my eyes...again.
A faint flash of light lit up the room.
"One, two three..." I began counting until I got to the number twelve and "Boom," I heard again. (You know why I did this, don't you? So I could know the miles between the storm and me.)
"Maybe," I thought to myself, "Maybe the storm is moving away from us, over the hills, up the mountain, out of sight and sound.
Flash. "One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight..." Boom!
The gentle sway of the breeze turned into a mighty shake of the wind as the fig tree scraped and scratched the screen of the window beside me.
Flash. "One, two, three, four..." Boom!
I pulled the covers off of my body and dangled my leg off the side of the bed. I did not ask myself, "Should I go to my grandparents' room?" I simply got up and headed down the hall toward them.
My little feet were at the threshold of their bedroom door when there was a flash that lit up the whole room and a boom that shook the whole house, all at the same time. The storm was directly over us!
The world record in the long jump at that time was a bit over 29 feet. On that night, at that moment, tiny Trevor Scott Barton soared over twice that mark and landed in his grandpa and grandma's bed!
My heart was beating as loudly as the thunder...my mind was flashing as wildly as the lightning...as the hands of my grandparents closed around mine.
Never before or never since have I felt so safe...so secure...in sanctuary...even as the storm raged around us.
The rain beat so hard on their roof, I could hear nothing but the RATTA TAT TAT of the drops against the tin.
Soon, though, as is the way of southern summer thunder storms, the rain slackened, the thunder eased, the lightning grew faint again until there was only a DRIP DRIP DRIP against the sill of the window.
"Were you scared?" asked my grandpa with a kindness in his voice reserved for me, the boy who made him a grandpa.
"Yes."
"It's okay. Here, let me tell you a story..."
This is what good stories do, right? They give us sanctuary...they grow us...they help us see...they help us hear...they help us feel...they help us touch...they help us become more human.
They help us become.
Listen to the words of another great storyteller, the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda, in his poem Ode To Tomatoes -
and, on
the table, at the midpoint
of summer,
the tomato,
star of earth,
recurrent
and fertile
star,
displays
its convolutions,
its canals,
its remarkable amplitude
and abundance,
no pit,
no husk,
no leaves or thorns,
the tomato offers
its gift
of fiery color
and cool completeness.
So it is with stories
Go out and offer the world the gift of fiery color and cool completeness, the gift of story, the gift of yourselves.
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