When my stepdaughter, Carolyn, was maybe five or six (maybe older), we would spend time co-writing stories together. She’d pull a chair up next to me at the desk where my computer was. Sometimes we’d each write a sentence – one building off of the other, sometimes it was more than a sentence each. The first few times, I was usually the one to introduce elements of the improbable…. A group of kids are walking down the street (might be her line). And suddenly a gang of alligators crawled out of the sewer (my line). I wanted to see how her mind worked, I wanted us to have fun with it, I wanted her to grasp that stories need elements of surprise and conflict, I wanted us to be silly as we played with words and ideas. Before long, she picked up on my tricks, and our stories spiraled in to the absurd. We could never figure out how to end our ridiculous efforts.
In storytelling, as in life, there has to be “what next…” moments (the absurdists and avant garde might disagree). There is always conflict. Otherwise, the story simply is, a group of kids walked down the street (I think the Buddhists would be fine with that). I’m not sure if what I was doing with Carolyn was the equivalent of jumping the shark, and it wasn’t quite deux ex machina, and we certainly weren’t trying to write high literature, but it seemed like an important lesson. Be creative, Be adaptive. Take control of the story, or at least write your part.
As I think back on some of those stories and how I was always trying to upend things a bit, throw curveballs out there to get laughs from a curly-haired chucklehead, I think about our own ability or inability to change. As adults we fall in to patterns. We learn to calculate what is probable. We shrug of the fantastic.
Yesterday my mom texted me to say she was thinking about reaching out to my ex-fiancee, B. She didn’t want to do it behind my back. She said she had come across pictures of us from last Thanksgiving. I asked her to send them to me…. I also think my mom has been checking my site several times a day, reading everything I post… Either way, something has spurred her to want to reach out. This is one possible problem of putting it all out there – you don’t know what shit you’re stirring up. I told my mom what I always tell her – I’m neither going to encourage her nor stop her. I believe people should tell people what they’re thinking and feeling – especially if it’s along the lines of “I miss you. I’m thinking of you. I love you.” We don’t hear those things nearly enough in this world, and we don’t say them nearly enough.
As of this morning, my mom still hadn’t written to B, and wanted my opinion on it. I asked her to think about what she wants to say and why she wants to say it. Is there an outcome she’s hoping for? She said “to get some feelings off of my chest.” I suggested that while that might help her, would it be helpful to B? She acknowledged that yeah, it might stress her out OR she might reflect on the past. In this moment, I found myself saying that if she’s going to reflect, it has to be on her terms. More importantly, I told my mom that as much as I would love to be missed, B has had a lot of loss in her life, and I’m not sure that I (or we) register. And that’s the role we play…. the people being left behind always hoping to be remembered – because that’s all we’re left with.
The other day I was writing about waiting as a feminine posture. I speculated, I think, that there are those who leave and those who wait. I usually fall into the group of people who wait. One thing B said to me after leaving was that once she leaves, she never goes back. As a believer in love above all else, I’ll never understand this stance – how can one be so certain, so closed off to life’s possibilities (I love the idea of a reunion as the happy ending). My conversation with my mom this morning made me think about the roles we play and the narrative of our lives. Did B assume the role of the one who leaves and never looks back, never comes back? Has she always played that role? Am I stuck in the role of the one who waits, alone in the doorway, hoping to be remembered, never to reunite? I used to watch out the window as my dad left on the nights he came to visit us. Is that just who I am?
And this is when I like to think about the “why not” questions. Can’t we just introduce a plot twist? Isn’t that how it all started in the first place? One in which the story is heading in one direction (two lovers on different paths) and maybe instead of alligators, a hot air balloon appears. Couldn’t life be as simple as climbing in and floating away? Maybe it carries us over fields of wheat and sunflowers, crosses hills and follows coastlines, floats on and on through day and night. And just as dawn begins to break, we touch down somewhere new, somewhere with lots of sun and white puffy clouds – a place neither of us have ever been. I want to live in a world full of possibilities. I want to live in a world where it’s still safe to dream. A world where the roles aren’t determined by how we’ve always been (one who leaves or one who waits). A world with plot twists like falling in love and getting carried away. Love seems to be one of those rare things that truly creates and transforms – takes us somewhere outside of ourselves, somewhere foreign and wonderful. This is what magic looks and feels like, and don’t we all want a little more magic in our lives?
