Tell Us A Story
“Tell us a story,” my college student asked, upraised head snuggled into her folded arms on her desk. I admired her smart request on final exam day, one guaranteed to tamp down anxiety. Thirty students relaxed at a vivid rendering of my high school basketball team’s 103-13 loss, a spectacle endured by long-suffering players, fans, and a weeping coach. Trading Platonic theory for an image of their teacher as a pigtailed ninth-grader, scoring one point, they laughingly offered belated condolences.
Storytelling pulls us into other lives and helps us understand our own. The best lessons, the ones we remember, come wrapped inside a narrative. I cherish the stories entrusted to me by readers, in person and via email, evoked by my stories. We somehow know each other—a shortcut to intimacy.
A virus has called a global time-out, lives on pause if we have the luxury of staying home. What better time to feed our basic human hunger for communication?
Yesterday I talked with my cousin Maria who lives in Olympia, Washington. I was struck afterward by my loose shoulders and massaged heart. We laughed uproariously about the storytelling prowess of our grandmother. Plum told incredible stories, holding her breath to avoid interruption as she rolled seamlessly from one yarn to another. I recalled one of her doozies, an April Sunday with family and friends focused on the televised final round of the Masters Tournament. “You know I tried golf once,” octogenarian Plum broke the silence. “Made a hole-in-one. Never played again, wasn’t that interested after that experience.” Harder conversations were made easier by tales of our never-golfing grandmother. Maria and I also imagined a future assuredly altered by the pandemic, discussing the article “Prepare for the “Ultimate Gaslighting” by Julio Vincent Gambuto. Storytelling will help us first picture and then create that future.
Good communication always eases dis-stress, and especially now. Whether it’s an actual conversation, in person or on the phone—an email or text or post or pigeon-delivery—let’s invite and welcome people into our lives. Share a virtual garden tour, a musical performance, an art show. Trust in the rewards of listening and being heard, touching through the distancing. Don’t lose faith in our human sameness—revel in its proof. Closed in, we can nevertheless open up.
Authentic communication was on my mind when I sat down for this March 31 phone interview with Lynn Thompson. If even one sliver of one idea helps anyone during this time, I’m grateful.
How well I remember the sad, hopeful-yet-unconvinced face of the University of Virginia student who asked if I really thought genuine communication was still possible in our society (2013). “Beyond a doubt,” I responded, surer now.
Wordless communication works its magic, too. My college roommate Eleanor sent this photograph of the pink moon over the ocean in Jacksonville Beach—enough said. One sentence can tell an eternal story. Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli, alone in Milan’s Cathedral, says before his performance: “We will hug this wounded Earth’s pulsing heart.” His “we” is all. And meet our new friends from Rotterdam, musicians playing familiar chords “From us, for you.”
Pull close.
From me to you.
Told with McCarty’s characteristic wisdom, marvel, exuberance, and good will, Leaving 1203 is about navigating that way through. The author draws on all available resources—friends and strangers, food and laughter, life lessons learned in the very house she now empties, and, not least, her newly-inherited West Highland terrier, Billy. McCarty simultaneously learns and deftly teaches the fine arts of remembering, letting go, and holding on to what matters most. She not only finds the way through, she shows the way.
the greatest gift an author could give a reader… lessons of a universally philosophical and existential kind… a touching journey… a welcome, upbeat ride
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