Storytelling Class

As something fun to do, I took an on-line storytelling class. My neighbor and mother of a friend of my boys, Noa Baum, is a professional storyteller. As the live entertainment world disappeared, she has moved things online. When an email came around about a four-week class in August, it seemed like a fun way to spend a few hours.

It turned out to be great! There were slightly over a dozen of us, from all around the world. Israel, India, Lebanon, Singapore, west coast, east coast, and Kenya. (One of the participants was my boat partner's husband, a retired teacher and current historical novelist who jumped on this when I mentioned it.) Amazing to me, when I think about it, the ability to have such an interactive experience with such a wide-ranging group. Noa used Zoom really effectively - we alternated between all together (and on the computer, I could see everyone at once without scrolling), and then breakouts, usually with two of us, switching up the pairs each time. Noa actually had an assistant in Singapore who joined us and handled a lot of the tech real time for her, so she could focus on talking or listening. For a shy introvert like me, this structure worked really well and there were minimal technical glitches.

We started off the first class with specific prompts to spend a minute visualizing (e., g. a favorite place, a pivotal moment, a special gift), and then broke off into our pairs to describe them (not a story, not yet). Noa led us through some exercises, and talked about what makes telling a story different from an anecdote, and different from written stories. We were sent off after the first class with homework - pick one of the prompts (or something else) to be the germ of your story. Then free write about it, and tell it to actual people. As story is only a story if it is told. DO NOT WRITE IT OUT WORD FOR WORD.

Each week, we worked on our stories in and between classes. Class continued to split into pairs for the telling and for the structured feedback. We focused at different times at adding color, context, change, closure, action, visuals, meaning. 

I consciously chose to not tell a story that would drive deep emotions for me. The last time I did that, at my mother's funeral, it didn't go well. I had done a fair amount of public speaking in my job, and I wrote out notes, but when I started to talk, I choked. I got through the eulogy, but with sobs and I was surprised how hard it was. And so my story for the class started fairly trivially, with a joke. But as we worked through specific areas of what makes a story a story, I saw dimensions in it and it grew in different and surprising ways each time I told it. It wasn't raw, the way some aspects of grief are, but it is true, and it resonates emotionally for me.

The last class, most of us told our stories, limited to 5 minutes each (with 5 minutes of Noa's feedback and group feedback in the zoom chat). I wasn't sure if I was going to tell my story. It seemed trivial still to me, as many of the folks were choosing really profound and pivotal moments in their lives. But finally I opted in, and I think it went well. The adrenaline caused me to go fast, and is always good, I kept in mind where I wanted to end, and left out much more than I put it along the way. 

So here is my story, more or less as I actually told it. It was surprisingly difficult not to let myself edit and re-write and edit some more as I captured it here, but I wanted to be as faithful as possible to that telling. If I ever tell this story out loud again, it will change again, because, as Noa always says, that is the nature of storytelling. 

My Story

Like many kids, my thirteenth year was miserable. We were living in Michigan that year, in the middle of a multi-country, multi-state, odyssey. My father was a rising research scientist, and as the war on cancer spooled up, he was in great demand. To me, that meant every year a new school. I had no friends, I was sad, it seemed all I did was stay home and read books.

Never-the-less, I woke the morning of my thirteenth birthday with a sense of anticipation: I knew my family would take care of me. After breakfast, we all trooped into the living room – my father, the only man in American wearing bow ties that year, my mother, dressed in her new professional work clothes for her new job, my big brother, on every sports team, and my baby sister, cute and with an English accent lingering from the year before. There was a small heap of presents on the fireplace mantel. I opened the first, and I thought it was a leather belt, but then I figured out it was a dog leash! The second one I opened was a dog collar! I lifted the third box, small, square, rattling when I shook it, and said to my parents, “there has to be a puppy in here!”

My mother soon explained: she had been to the dentist that week, and while lying back in her chair with the dentist’s hands in her mouth she had agreed to take one of his puppies. It seems the dentist’s champion golden retriever had given birth to 8 black puppies, due to a champion fence-jumping black Labrador next door. He was successfully pawning off puppies on his vulnerable patients.

That weekend, we picked up the tiny, squirmy, wiggly puppy with the non-stop little stump of a wagging tail. We named her “Worry”, inappropriately, because this dog was the biggest optimist in the world! Everything was wonderful! Everything was exciting! Something good was always happening! Everyone in the family wanted to play with the cute puppy, but she was MINE! My mother told me, whoever feeds the puppy is who she will love best, so I stepped up and took over the dog’s care.

Now, instead of wandering home alone from school to sit with my books, every day I clipped on the leash and took the dog for a walk. At first, her little stumpy legs would only take her to the end of the block, but as she grew, we ventured further and further. And as we walked through the flat, square suburban blocks of our Midwestern college town, I began to see the world through my dog’s eyes. Everything was new! Everything was exciting! Something good was bound to happen, maybe just around that next corner!

During that summer, we learned we were moving again, this time to a small town out east on Long Island. So we packed up everything, and did a long family drive, on the Ohio Turnpike, the Pennsylvania Turnpike, the New Jersey Turnpike, and finally, past New York City, another couple of hours to Bellport. We passed white picket fences, and pulled up to our big cedar shingle house on the main road.

As soon as we arrived, I clipped on my dog’s leash, and the two of us headed out to explore. Just a little way down the road next to our house, we came to the water. This was salt water, but not the ocean, instead the protected bay that shelters the south shore of Long Island. I looked out at the water, at the boats bobbing on moorings there, and I knew I could get in a boat and go anywhere in the world. But then my dog picked up a piece of driftwood and dropped it at my feet. I tossed it in the water, she swam out and wrestled it back, dropped it again, shook all over, and asked me to do it again. Over and over I threw the stick, and over and over she asked me to do it again. I watched the boats, the water, and my dog, and I knew it would be ok. I knew I was home, and something good was bound to happen.

Books I have Known

My sixth birthday
Yay, a book! Cowboys!

I've been a reader since I can remember. One of my earliest memories is sitting with my brother with him teaching me to read. I was skipped a grade because in kindergarten I was reading at second grade level. Now, I'm probably not tops in comprehension, but I am quick. Books I read along the way have had a profound influence on my life. Even the light entertainments I consume have had a positive influence on my vocabulary.

Despite having been employed at a library for four years, and having family members and many friends who became professional librarians, I was not a good library user. I loved going and checking out books. I would read them, and then let them sit around the house for weeks on end. I decided it would be cheaper to hang out at bookstores than to pay fines. The decade I spent in Ann Arbor at college coincided with the founding there of Border's Books - I've met Tom Border many times. During my first years post-grad school, going to the bookstore was one of the biggest pleasures of many weekends. It remained a constant pleasure for decades.

Around about the turn of the century, I realized I needed to either stop buying books or else get more bookshelves. My small house was bursting at the seams. I opted to line my entire basement with Billy bookcases from Ikea. When I found an author I liked, I went all in, usually buying an entire series of mystery or science fiction and often re-reading them. I loved looking at a series all lined up together on the shelf.

Then came e-readers and the possibility of not only not having so many books lying around but instant gratification when I wanted a new book. I was not a first-wave adopter, but I got a kindle in the second or third generation. I made a decision to never buy a mystery or science fiction any other way. For me, it's seamless to read on the device - it doesn't get in my way at all. But I have learned that actual physical reference books, and coffee table books, and cookbooks, have big advantages over something accessed on a small black-and-white kindle or an only slightly bigger (though colorful) tablet. Three or four years ago a friend showed me how to get library e-books onto the kindle, saving me literally thousands of dollars on novels since then.

When I'm into something, I can be really into it. I like to learn about them. Often that means buying books on the topic. My remaining shelf of "how-to" books can serve as a little chronology of hobbies I've had over the years. Backgammon, sewing and specifically quilting, knitting, cross-country skiing, kayaking, motorcycling, all make an appearance here. I still have these books because I'm not necessarily done with these activities.

All the basement books left after culling

When it came time to renovate the basement, all the stuff down there was an obstacle to getting started. It took me about three years to get through all the crap (with some left at the end to be disposed of only when I was moving back in). I got rid of an incredible number of books. Our county library has a very active "Friends" group that run two retail used-book stores. One of them was located just a mile from my house for several years (it's since moved much farther away). After my first ambitious culling into boxes, and subsequent struggle to get them out of the basement and into the car, I realized I couldn't carry a full box of books, and so brown paper grocery bags became my favored method of disposal. Each weekend I would drop off 3-4 bags, not wanting to carry more than that at one time and also trying not to overwhelm the volunteers at the library.

I had to hide my books behind a fence
to keep Rocky from indulging his literary taste

I worked in a library for quite a while. I have to organize my books. Currently I have them roughly sorted by topic into different physical locations, but not actually alphabetized. I still have bookcases in the two upstairs bedrooms, my office, and in the room formerly known as The Dog's Room, just renovated. I took advantage of the reno to get rid of ten brown bags of books from the Dog's Room (and a shelf of DVDs), most to the library bookstore. The books remaining in the room now are travel books and garden books. This includes travel writing, even fiction set in destination locales, and nature writing and field identification guides. All of these books have value to me in hard copy with the ability to look at pictures and flip back and forth between pages.

Travel books

Taking the time to dust, clean, and sort the books as I moved back into the Dog's Room this week has sparked a real interest in looking at them again. I kept old travel books for places I still hope to go to, though I'll probably buy an ipad version of a new travel guide for any place I go.  I haven't really looked at some of the garden books for a few years, because I had to keep them locked away from Rocky and it just wasn't convenient to get them out. So I have some of my winter reading set! 

In my bedroom, I have an entire six-shelf bookcase of books on aviation. Not how-to books, I got rid of those to some eager takers in the neighborhood in the basement culling. These are mostly memoirs and biographies of early women fliers, and some fiction also starring mostly women. When I got bit by the flying bug, it was an extreme situation. For a couple of years, I read little else. I was traveling a lot for work and I would drop into bookshops in whatever country I was in, searching for books about women fliers. So it's really a good collection. I think I could part with it, but I want to part with it as a collection to a home that will appreciate it. Any ideas?

Garden books

Home of My Heart

I've lived a number of places in the world, and visited many more, but Bellport will always be the home of my heart. My family lived there when I was born, but we moved to the middle of the country when I was five. We returned for many long summer visits, and Bellport grew in my mind as the aquatic marine summer paradise place I longed to be all the time. We moved back permanently as I started high school, and the acquisition of a sailboat cemented the deal. My high school years were not particularly happy and there certainly is not enough money in the world to ever convince me to relive them. It was the sixties, and traumas both political and personal were significant. But the place I lived was much of what made those years bearable.

I come from a family of great indoors people. Touring the great capitals of the world was their idea of an ideal vacation. My parents were profoundly bored by the beach, we never once went camping, and the idea of scrambling around a little sailboat buffeted by wind and waves was anathema to them. The year we moved back to Bellport, my mother wrote in her Christmas letter how sad we all were to leave the delights of a college town in the midwest. She clearly never checked in with me, her middle child, to find out how I felt about it.

Carmen's River, where we sailed

Bellport gave me the freedom to go places and do things as an adolescent I couldn't have done in many other places. It was a small rural and prosperous town back then, with some summer people, but not with ostentatious wealth or fashion. Alone or with friends, I could bike through small roads and over a bridge to the beach on Fire Island. On weekends, we would go birdwatching with some avid adult birders, hanging out in marshes and on beaches throughout the east end of Long Island. Even more delightfully, my friends and I could sail to Fire Island, or other destinations along the Great South Bay, one of the best small boat sailing areas in the world. It has the steady and strong ocean breeze, but very sheltered water so no big waves. Even better, at least half the area of the Bay is so shallow that if a boat capsizes you can stand on the bottom to right it! Astonishing to me now, my friends and I were allowed to take a family small sailboat each summer for up to week, cruising along the Bay and tying up to shore at night. Our boats were completely open with no toilet or cooking facilities aboard, but the Fire Island National Seashore provided docks to tie up to and places to put a small campstove for cooking. Generally there were also payphones, and we tried to remember to call in each night to assure them we were still alive.

I left to go to college (in the midwest, ironically) in 1972. I never spent a whole summer back in Bellport afterwards. But my family was dug in there, until my mother moved down near me in DC in 2006. Even then, she and I would go back for visits, once or twice a year, until about ten years ago when we went back for the funeral of one of her best friends. Her declining health and declining pool of friends decided against any more trips.

So it was a lovely surprise when I got an invitation to the eightieth birthday party for one of my close friends there, and realized the calendar was free and I really wanted to go. The birthday girl was also a close friend of J, my boat partner who was my friend in high school, and who actually moved back to Bellport (well, ok, Brookhaven, a mere hamlet to Bellport's village) as an adult for about a decade. She decided to come as well - she hadn't been back in nearly 30 years!

The Birthday Girl, Jo, is about a dozen years older than me. That was perfect when I was in high school. I think every adolescent can benefit from adult friends to show alternative ways to be in the world, something different from the parents. Jo and her husband, Phil, provided a safe place to hang out, drop in, drink tea, and sometimes meet other kids from the next town over where Phil was a teacher.

The beach

We had an uneventful but tedious nearly seven hour drive up to the island on Friday. We went directly to Smith Point beach on Fire Island, as Friday had the best weather forecast of the weekend. One of our objectives for the weekend was to walk along the beach to where Superstorm Sandy had made a breach in Fire Island, letting the ocean in directly to the Bay. The breach has since filled in with sand, on all but the highest of high tides. It was a bit of a hike - 4 1/2 miles round trip - but we took our time and watched some birds and stood in the very low spot where the ocean had been washing over the sand. We had spent many many hours in roughly the same spot, and sailing over the waters of the bay just inside the barrier beach, so it was fun to spot landmarks on the far shore. Many of them were just the same.

We stayed in a bargain Airbnb just outside Bellport. I think we may have been the fourth set of guests to stay there - we were the fourth folks to review it, anyway. It was very clean and very basic. I would guess the owner had done the work himself (or hired a friend) because it was not skillful work. There was no weather stripping on the outside door, and when the wind blew the puffs came in. There were stripes of wall paint on the ceiling where the taping wasn't sufficient. There was no book of instructions or local area tips. It had a fancy coffee machine, ground coffee and mugs, but no sugar or cream. The fridge was entirely empty. No ironing board, no hair dryer, sparse furniture. But comfy bed, plenty of bedlinens and towels, a decent shower. It did the job. We left some suggestions on the private feedback, and stressed the positive on the public review.

Friday night, we ate at the fancy Bellport Restaurant. We had no reservation, and we were shuttled to a back room, away from the hopping main part where very attractive people were socializing between tables and the bar. But we asked our server to let the head chef know we were there (using the first names we used back in the day which is not how we are now known to friends). The head chef is the son of the birthday girl, and we used to change his diapers! He came out, astounded, as his sister the party organizer had elected to keep our attendance a secret. So we got excellent food and service and a discount on the drinks. It was fun to see him as an adult in his element - the last time J had seen him, he was babysitting her children! 

Saturday was kind of drizzly, but we made a pilgrimage out to see my mother's building. Back in the year 2000, a local health center was renamed in her honor. I wouldn't have been surprised to see it renamed or even the whole building repurposed, because it's been twenty-five years. I was really touched to find it is not only still a community health center, but even though it's under new management and has a new name, they kept the "Marilyn Shellabarger". 

It's still her building!

 

We took another hike, through a wildlife refuge and along a marsh, seeing more birds and wildlife. We also visited all of our former houses and favorite places in a driving tour, commenting on the changes, not always favorably. Highly enjoyable!

The birthday party was fun! Jo has many many health challenges running back over many years, but she is still gutsy and independent and sharp and funny. Of course, the food was excellent, because not only is her son a fancy chef, but her daughter is a professional baker. There were not lots of people there, but an unexpected treat were the couple who lived behind my parents' house. Also eighty years old, they had sold their house last year and moved back to their old neighborhood on the upper west side, and driven out for the weekend. They were both very bent over and walked very slowly with canes. Also still sharp and funny and highly opinionated, I enjoyed talking to them both. 

Sunday morning we got up early, hit a diner for breakfast, and were off the island and to the NJ turnpike by 9 am. The trip home was uneventful, and a full 90 minutes shorter than the trip up.

I don't know that I will ever go back to Bellport. Jo and her family are my only people links to the place. Being there, I feel both at home and a stranger. I go to a familiar place, but nobody knows me and knows that I belong there, though I feel strongly that I do. The first time I played the game of "what will I do if I win the mega-lottery?" the first thing that popped up was "buy a place in Bellport". But that's really the only way it would happen. 

Maybe it's better to just keep it in my heart, and not allow myself to be disappointed by any inconvenient realities.

NOTE: Originally published on Buddy, May 2024

Awards from Nan's Work

I worked twenty-two years at the same agency. It appears government agencies like to give out awards left and right - some would say as opposed to just paying people what they are worth. At any rate, I got lots, some of which I really valued and others I thought were hardly deserved. The "hardly deserved" might be because my own contribution was trivial, or else because the accomplishment itself was very dubious (though politically important), or both.

1997: This was a big project,
and my first introduction to government awards.

1997: This was the beginning of my cynicism.
This wasn't worth it.

1999: This was a personal award, for having worked in a temporary promotion that didn't come with any money. I guess better than nothing.

2000: OK

2000: 0k

2001: This is something that was very important to me - and to the country.
One of the untold stories of the aftermath of 9/11.

2006: A lot of work, but not successful.

 

2007: A very large team.

2009: This is one of the things of which I am most proud. I know my personal contribution made a difference. This was a safety rule that prevents accidents like TWA800 from happening again.

 

2010: I care about this especially because she became a friend.

2017: I worked hard, and had a leadership role.
I have stories...