“Who is the greatest story teller you have ever heard?”
Each time this question was asked on book tour, I paused, smiled, and gave a two word response. It was the one question to which I didn’t have to contemplate the answer. When asked for an example of this unknown legend, I liked to quote the following random e-mail that showed up in my inbox a few months ago.
“I was getting into the blocks. They were aluminum and fixed. Shaking legs, bending, actually bending both knees; squatting and then jumping. Then jumping again, higher. I was strong, excited, nervous, and able to run. Actually run. Actually ready and able to run hard and as fast as I could. I was getting into the blocks. I heard a sound. She spoke something in my ear. I looked around. She nudged me. I couldn’t see the blocks anymore. Then I couldn’t see anything anymore. It was dark and six o’clock in the morning and your mom is getting up from the bed. I rise slowly up into a sitting position. My legs don’t work anymore. Neither does my back for that matter. But I remember the blocks. I remember almost running. I remember the wind against my face. It was a good day.”
My father. When I was a child, he sat at the foot of my bed and told me stories to ease my transition from chronic restlessness to a deep sleep. As a lost undergraduate, workaholic law student, and insane attorney, he plied his path to my memories and heart through written words. While the stories were usually crafted purely from his imagination and wit, he sometimes delved into his own personal experiences, like running track at 10,000 feet above sea level and sadistically loving every moment of it. Thirty years later, his days in the blocks call to him, but cannot be answered. But he remembers. And through his words, I remember. And that to me, makes him the greatest storyteller I have ever heard. He gave me memories that were not mine and filled my head with thoughts that give my pen a deeper well from which to ink its hopes and dreams.
Or as Louis L’Amour said “a writer’s brain is like a magician’s hat. If you’re going to get anything out of it, you have to put something in it first.” Then there is Harold Goddard who murmured that “the destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in.” In the end, they’re both right, but most importantly, in the end, I am my father’s daughter. And this are the stories I have to tell . . .
