stories

"Knowing that we are made up, not of atoms, but of love and stories is also vital. When we die what is left is love in the form of stories"



Love can be such a tangled up thing, the unsaid, the over talked, the misconstrued.

Love can be so trusting, so open, so closed, so fleeting.

Love can just be a part of our cells, a knowing that is so deeply a part of us that we never have to question, sometimes take for granted, treat badly and then when the truth of it is blindingly obvious, we scrabble for its repair.

But all love has a story.

Some of those stories are sad.
Some of them are simple.
Some of them are only revealed after they have passed.
Some of them are so blindingly beautiful that even if they are short they nourish us beyond our days - into the days of our children, and their children...

We all carry stories about love. About how love shaped us, built us up, or carved us out...

It is the way we treat those stories - the compassion with which we recount the stories in our heart, with which we allow our versions of the actions of ourselves and others to change over time - it is this compassion that shapes our lives...

Do we see ourselves as deserving of the kind of love we got?

Do we see ourselves as requiring more? Less?

Because as the wonderful Patty Digh says at the end of it all we are just stories...

dressing up and my intuition

I am a Pippi Longstocking wannabe

Independant,strong, good friends, parents are strangely invisible, she even has a monkey for heaven's sake!

So when i got the chance to dress up as Pippi at the local library's character hunt i jumped at it...

the morning of the big event i drew a Goddess card - Sulis - the celtic Goddess related to bodies of water - i have drawn her repeatedly over the last few weeks...

so with my plaits wired and red spray in my hair i went down to the library - i was 10 minutes early and sat in the car listening to the radio and rearranging Mr Nelson around my neck...

then i thought of Sulis and so i decided to go behind the library and look at the river - this thought did not come lightly - it was cold - i was a little daunted by the fact that i am a grown woman dressed like the ultimate girl out of the context of a library it seemed ... well... weird

but over i went and stood on the bridge, having deep thoughts about never stepping in the same river twice, about being washed clean, about what we are doing to our rivers mirroring the degradation we are subjecting our souls to...

and then along came a woman - looking in her early 50s with a scruffy dog... i smiled and said hello as i customarily do

and i got greeted by her life story... rich and sad, full of loss and joy...

she told me of the years she wasted being unhappy with her husband and how deeply happy she is now - i can still see her holding her hands at an equal height in front of her saying "we are moving along at the same pace now"

her description of herself as "a community worker" - she is giving uup on saying "unemployed" because she recognises she is not - she bakes for the family that don't have time, she takes care of elderly friends...

her tender love for her 17 year old leonine dog...

all of it over in about 8 minutes, but like a gift from a benevolent universe, showing me that in unexpected places, and when i listen to my intuition there will be rich stories, connection and joy....

i could have stayed in my car then gone in and had a most excellent time pretending i was a rich pirates' daughter (and by God i did have a good time)

but i listened to Sulis and she bought me a mirror of the power of reaching out, reframing, flowing and growing... i don't know what that woman's name was but she gave me a real gift in her story and story is all that we are.

OLD friends

(the corner of our old house, right where Willow was born)

this last week i reconnected with my past



it was a deliberate act - had to organise schedules and get a bit bossy with my family,during this busy time of the year



but it had become clear that i needed to do something my conscience had been prickling me about ...



(to be read in your best Jimminy Cricket voice)



"It's been a long time. They get lonely. It's not far out of your way. They're good people"



so we went to the Kamo rest home.



We went to see Beth.



Beth was our neighbour when the girls were little - and one of the first people who came to welcome Willow (Willow was born at home and Beth could tell something was up. She was amazed she hadn't been woken by screaming! Beth must've seen too many bad movies.)



She is in her late 90's and used to exhaust me just watching her - she was part of a regular tramping group (hiking to any North American friends reading!) She did her own extensive garden, preserving, walked to the shops, drove all over...She also welcomed my girls into her life with open arms.



Eila used to toddle over to her house, just able to reach the doorbell and cuddle up on Beth's knee, looking at photo albums, eating "peppermint tablets" ("oddfellows" - a big round mint), walking around her garden discussing plants and flowers, picking posies .



Beth got sick with shingles and had to move into a rest home at around the same time as we left our house.



We have been up to visit her but our visits petered out a bit. I have lots of excuses but the last time we went she said, admonishingly "I thought you had forgotten me!"



Then last week, I met one of her carers in the street who said she had deteriorated and that galvanised me.



The look of joy on her face made it worthwhile. Sure she can't find lots of the words she wants, and that is frustrating for her, but she still has her wicked sense of humour and she still loves my girls and the feirce hug she gave us all was so full of love....



She couldn't see us out but we walked through the dining room where other residents were settling in for dinner... and the oohs and ahs and people actually reaching out for my girls and wanting to chat with us chipped a little peice off my heart... their joy at seeing someone young and vital and oblivious to their gift of youth, was palpable and a little overwhelming...



then we went down the hill to my Aunt and Uncle's little unit.



I am ashamed to say i haven't been there in the 4 or so years they've lived there. My uncle is my Dad's oldest brother and we were much younger than their children but they were always kind to me. OK, Aunty Lillian's gap in the front of her teeth distracted me so much as child, that i often found myself forgetting what she was saying. And she had this little girl giggle that sounded so odd on a woman. And their house was so tidy and full of geegaws and knicknacks that i was scared of knocking something over.



But Neville was kind to my Grandma. They loved my Grandma and took care of her so tenderly that they will always have a special place in my heart.



Neville can't walk well anymore. And he can only say a few words. Lillian always said more than him anyway. But the love in their eyes when they saw us was overwhelming.



And they told me a story about how surprised my Dad was when they told him they were getting married. Turns out my Dad had been spying on them. And he had seen their friends kissing under a hat. But the most my Dad had seen Nev and Lillian do was Neville tickling Lillian on the face with a peice of long grass. "That was our courting."Lillian giggled as she told me.



And my heart swelled with their love, days gone by, innocence, the richness of that story, their tenderness for each other.



the stories living in these three, and everyone at the table waiting for their dinner, are as alive as the day they were lived. Pulsing with their need for retelling. Waiting for their chance to return to the world, to show us what they saw....



those stories are waiting for my return.....



and i feel the weight of that in my heart.



but it is a good weight

TELLING OUR STORIES

i don't usually use capitals

but the title is in capitals today because more and more i am being prodded to see how essential stories are in our lives.

when i say essential i mean life saving.

not some pretty little add on that you can only make time for if you are a child, or you have a child, or you are a librarian...

but stories are ESSENTIAL, CRUCIAL, VITAL.

We are truely genetically programmed to learn through stories - that is how we learnt as cavemen... we sat around the fire, cramming mastadon into our gobs and hearing about how it was only by creeping up slowly that Ug managed to get close enough to get a good shot...

and so we learned and it was easier next time...

We passed myths from generation to generation because within them lies the meat of our souls...

the clues to the building blocks of who we are as humans

the blueprints for how we get out of sticky messes

of how we are not alone

and that is the crux of it for me...

So many of us in the Western world feel alone.

There are many ways to reach out (which is exactly what i do when i type away here on my couch in New Zealand... hoping to be heard)

and technology can aid that

but the power of story is being lost...

but i was blessed with a storyteller Grandad

and to meet Tanya Batt, a New Zealand Storyteller..

http://www.imagined-worlds.net/DisplaySite/ and learn from her about how story is like a stool with 3 legs - one the story, one the story teller and one the audience... how these need to balance and accomodate each other... how it is dynamic and alive -

and TV - as engaging as some stories on there can be (damn it, i even cry at some advertising) it is not alive in that same way...

and now we don't sit around the fire and just tell the story of our day, or the story our grandparents told us...we lose that path to learning - that connection to each other through our humanity....

i had a miscarriage 3 years ago.

It was inutterably sad.

But it was only when i was open about my grief, and our loss that others opened up. I heard how i wasn't alone mourning a child i would never hold in my arms. And within the space of sharing that story both myself and the others i shared with could truely comfort each other. And some of those wounds were decades old, and had never been heard, let out in the light before....

And i hear about people who have a crisis of confidence in their own lives and make radical and often painful changes. And i think if only they spoke to me - i could tell them it is not just them who question so deeply, digging into their souls, that the ordinary parts of their lives seem, for a time at least, meaningless...and then with all that digging new things grow...

And i spent some time with my beloved friends yesterday - people i have formed a bond with, people i don't see every day, but who hear my soul when it talks, or cries or jumps for joy...

And we told our stories.

We were authentic.

Some of it was painful, some hilarious.... but we became joined by our truths and that although we live radically different lives, the same threads of humanity run through our stories, our longings, our secrets, our dreams, our lives both seen and unseen.

this is part of the gift of authenticity, of clarity

but it also the key to being human

Please tell your story.

and thankyou for hearing mine.