No More Storytellers

My father and his father before him are all about the stories. Some of them were the kind that Cosby would tell jokes about..."walked in the snow, uphill, one way and no shoes." They also told stories that were more along the lines of how life came to be for them, for the women in the family and my siblings. The stories were important they taught us about our heritage in its varied and colorful yet sometimes hard and stricken hue. So much can be learned in these stories. So much is gained. Sorted and dysfunctional as my family still is, I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by great storytellers growing up. I learned that if your will is strong, bad examples can be just as helpful as good ones.

The funny ones you remember first and often because they make you laugh so hard you almost wet yourself. There are no dry cheeks in the circle and every belly aches into doubling over, laying on the floor contentment. It isn't till you are older or more as you get older that you understand and appreciate the underlying message within the laughter. When was the last time you heard a story about artesians? UFOs? Howabout a good bigfoot story? Everyone has a big fish story, the one that got away. You learn as you laugh.

The ones about family tell you the stuff you need to know about & from whence you came. Through these stories you learn to cook, raise children and understand the fight that it took to get you the leg up in the world. You understand a bit more about the people who supplied you your genes. You appreciate the little bit you have as it promises to turn into the whole lot you will have in comparison. You see the pieces of your self today, tomorrow and hopefully longer into the future. Good, bad or indifferent you learn how to parent and develop your ideals about every aspect of the matter. From great-grandma's pie recipe to Uncle Stan's tenacious optimism the stories told are the kind of warm blankets that you never outgrow, you never throwaway. If you are any kind of parent you will want to wrap your children in the same security, you will want your child submerged in that tribe.

That's the rub, right? Aren't too many of us left that grew up in the kind of environment that lent itself to an adult table and a kid's table at Thanksgiving dinner. Even fewer of us left that grew up with grandparents, aunts & uncles and cousins as well as play cousins. The epic stories of a family shape and release grounded and aware human beings. Without the stories that speak to our humanity and the storytellers to tell them we become disconnected and unconcerned. Stories bind the families. Storytellers raise other storytellers that protect our culture. A history unremembered is a history that will soon be the future.

These United States are in dire need of storytellers. Too many cannot cook. Too many look for gangs to fill the void. Too many parents aren't parenting. Too many neighborhoods are without neighbors. Too many children don't know where they came from so their future is at best aimless. Too many communities have forgotten how to commune. You can only feel sorry for those wonder at the state in which we find our country. So much emphasis on money and power has led us away from our duty to fortify our future. In the listening there is a promise to become a part of the tapestry thereby making ourselves and those we love stronger. In the telling there is a duty to usher into the world historians capable to keep us from chaos just by spinning yarns to those they come into contact far and wide.