My First Story in a Long Time

I remember a conversation we had once, years and years ago, when we were getting to know each other. You know--that fresh, tender part of every relationship when the urge to ask questions, the need to learn more about the other person is stronger than the urge to breathe.

“What would you be, what would you do, if you lived a hundred years ago?” he asked. I knew the answer without even having to think. “I’d be a teacher, just like now,” I replied. “How about a thousand years ago?” he wanted to know. That took a little more thought. Were there teachers a thousand years ago, I wondered? Not like there are today, I was pretty sure, the kinds of teachers who pitch kickball and tie shoes and open Go-gurt, who teach kids to read and add and play fair even when things aren’t going the way they want. What would I be?

“I would be a storyteller,” I blurted out, surprised by my own answer. That was the closest thing I could think of, the position whose responsibilities would be most like what I thought of teachers doing today. “I would be the person in a community who sees everything and remembers it all, who asks people about their lives and what they’ve learned and then turns it all into stories that everyone can hear and, most of all, learn from.”

“Hm,” he said, a thoughtful look on his face. “A storyteller. That seems like something you’d be really good at doing.”

And in the decade since that conversation, that is just what I became: as a teacher, as a writer, as a traveler; in letters, in professional publications, and in a series of blogs. My identity as a storyteller had become an almost-central element of my self-identity. That is until, for a variety of reasons--some surprising but others not--I gradually stopped writing in recent months. From April to August I barely wrote in my journal, from August to October I wrapped up my sixteen-month blog chronicle of my sabbatical and its round-the-world adventures, and finally in November I first slowed and eventually ceased the spiritual practice I first undertook on my 30th birthday in 2004 and had continued without fail since then: writing and mailing a real pen-and-ink letter every single day.

As you might guess, with almost no writing going on I haven’t been telling nearly as many stories. I guess I’ve felt tired, and like I wasn’t sure who wanted to listen anymore. I know I stopped looking around and listening as much to see everything and remember it all. But coincidentally (or, not?) I began to hear from people around Thanksgiving, friends and family and colleagues who had noticed my silence. “Why did you stop writing?” they asked, and “Are you going to start again soon?” I wasn’t sure, I didn’t want to. But I did begin to look around again, I was reminded that the world is full of stories and there are messages everywhere.

Last week I was on vacation in Hawai’i, on the north shore of Maui, and for the first time in a long time I began to try and write again. First a return to my daily letter-writing practice in the form of vacation postcards, then a slow segue into journal entries scribed by the shore of the sea, next the late-night drafting of a poem or two, and finally a short story about a man from Seattle standing on the beach in the pouring rain grilling hot dogs and drinking beer from a can. Not only did I write but I began to once again, after months and months of silence, slowly share my writing and my stories with others.

The trip back to the mainland was fraught with surprise and adventure: everything from power outages and lost reservations, last-minute gate changes and mechanical problems with the plane causing hours of delay, detention at the agricultural inspection checkpoint and airport Starbucks outposts rendered impotent by the lack of electricity. Sitting in the Honolulu airport waiting, endlessly, to board the flight back to California, I sent a summary of my day’s escapades to a friend and in return got the following text message:

“My name is Sarah Kotleba and every time I walk out the door a story happens to me.”

Hmm, I thought, he’s right…or, is he? Do more stories happen to me than to other people, or do I just see stories everywhere in places and times that others are blind to them? My thousand-year-old storyteller ancestor thinks there might not be a difference between those two questions, and knows that even if there is it doesn’t really matter one way or the other anyway. I like to tell stories, and I am ready to start writing again.

So I present to you my New Year’s project: a different story every day. Some will be long, some will be short, some will have pictures and to see the images of others you’ll just have to use your mind’s eye. I think everyone who says that in this life it’s just same story, different day probably had a different job a thousand years ago than I did.

Enjoy ☺