Creating a community

Encouraging others to tell their stories

Photo by S O C I A L . C U T on Unsplash

Dear Creative Soul,

In my events day job, I’m organising a high tea for pioneers in our community - people who have lived in this local government area for more than 50 years. You must have so many stories about the area, I say to one resident of more than 70 years. He wants to tell me some of them, I feel it in the way he breathes out “Oh yes …” with the slightest of pauses while he rummages through his internal library, but his wife is calling and, in the background, I hear the bustle of visitors arriving. I hang up, wondering who he tells his stories of days long gone, whether anyone listens.

I think about this a lot. As humans, the desire to tell our stories comes from the deep wellspring of our being. Who are we? Where did we come from? What are our values and where did they come from? What has life been like for us? Some of us are selective about who we share our stories with, some not so much. Some prefer to listen, while others wish someone would listen.

“From the earliest moments as babies when we begin to imitate sounds, we are already intently listening to stories. They come from our family, our neighbors, from the fields and the streets, from books.” - Fang Fang

Last week, I worked behind-the-scenes at a Citizenship Ceremony. Seventy people from fifteen different countries pledged an oath of citizenship, all dressed up for the occasion. I wondered what and whom they left behind. Why they chose Australia. How they share their stories. Imagine if we’d been able to hear some of those on the night. But perhaps not all would want to share.

“Stories can bridge chasms, connecting us in our common ridiculousness. Among outsiders, we tell stories to preserve, to transmit pride across generations, to build dynasties of meaning.” - Amy Chua

My maternal and paternal grandparents were Germans who migrated to Australia in the 1950s. As is common to many of that generation and place, they kept so many stories buried deep inside, preferring to talk about now rather than then, preferring not to dwell on lingering sadness from leaving family members behind. On people they would never see again. On a time that tainted them with a sense of collective shame. I have little idea what my grandparents were like as a child, what they dreamed becoming, although I know my paternal grandmother wanted to write a book and loved walking and rowing and cornflowers. In her later, and increasingly less lucid, years, she would utter things like “Two soldiers came into my room” or “Those people (in the cafeteria) were all talking about me, they don’t like me because I am German”. Memories? A version of the long-buried truth?

1958. My father is the smiling boy at the front. He is pictured with his family and extended family members before boarding the Castel Felice, a passenger ship that carried over 100,000 immigrants to Australia and New Zealand between 1952-1970

When my maternal grandfather died, my mother kept several of his prized belongings: his old 1950s radio that had pride of place on a cabinet next to the small dining table (I never heard it on), a small poker machine we were only allowed to play with once, an accordion he took out on a handful of occasions. And a book of photos, small and age-yellowed, taken by his father showing bombed areas in WW1 Germany. I didn’t know it existed until she found it, packed away with my grandfather’s immigration and apprenticeship papers, and an early 1950s newspaper advertisement enticing migrants to Australia, complete with an illustration of kangaroos feeding in front of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. I wonder what he - and my maternal grandmother, pregnant with my mother - thought of this country when they arrived just before a Sydney summer. If they wondered where the kangaroos were. I know he adjusted to Australia better than she did; my maternal grandmother died at 42, and I wonder if she had a broken heart, so far from home, unwanted in this new country.

I think of my grandparents and I wish I knew more about their younger selves. What Christmas was like as children, what their villages were like, if they had a car. What they really thought of the war and how they got through it. What the ship voyage to Australia was like. What it was like to be an immigrant in a somewhat hostile environment.

I do know they experienced great loss and grief and pain.

I would have listened if they told me about that.

I am starting to understand why they did not. My father tells me it was too hard for them. My aunt tells me what she knows, but a lot has been forgotten.

“Storytelling is also the gateway to truth-telling, which helps inform our opinions, decision-making and self-views. Sharing our stories allows us to come together, declare what our values are and act on them. Without storytelling, we would not have the layers of history that impact our present and influence the future.” - Wendell Pierce

My adult children don’t seem as interested in others’ stories. I tell them bits and pieces; they listen politely, but don’t ask questions. I don’t know if it is their age - they range from 23-28 years - and others have told me the same about their children and grandchildren. There is sadness when they tell me this, sadness at knowing stories will be lost, at knowing the interest might come when it is too late. I find it hard to understand sometimes, because I have always wanted to know others’ stories. Is it story fatigue? Too much available online, too much information, too many competing (and, perhaps to them, more compelling) stories?

What I loved most about being a journalist was finding out peoples’ stories; I carried that into my work at the arts centre where I worked for twelve years until March just gone:

I have started an open-mic group. One woman reads a poem to her lover. We are on the edge of our seats, hands on our hearts. We think it is a proposal. Another man reads about not being allowed to attend his father’s funeral when he was a 12-year-boy. We talk about this. His father was ill and spent some time in a hospital; he asked his children to write to him, but being children, they never got around to it. His father never came home. There are tears in his eyes: sadness, regret, even a touch of bitterness aimed at his mother. A well-dressed and coiffed older woman tells of catching and killing rabbits in the ‘50s when they were at plague proportions on farms, adding a touch more theatre than necessary for another woman of a similar age with straggly grey plaits who carries “No Fracking” and “Save the Penguins” signs wherever she goes.

… and into my work as a novelist.

I am running a Black-Out Poetry workshop at a local library. One of the participants is painstakingly circling words on a photocopied page from Jane Eyre, creating a poem of “found” words, her tongue sticking out from the side of her mouth. As she creates, she confesses that her social anxiety meant it was an effort to leave the house, although she desperately wanted to attend, to get out of the house. I gently encourage her to join another group of storytellers that meets at the local arts centre where I work. She says she will, but it is more than a year later before she takes that step – she is surprised when I remember her name, her story.

In my current job, I miss being involved in the sharing of stories, encouraging others to give an insight into their deeply human and lived experience. But I am starting to realise that by creating events, I am helping to create stories. I may never hear them, but they will exist. And when the high tea event takes place, I will make time to sit with some of our community’s elders and listen. I will encourage them to use the conversation starter cards I will place on each table, and reminisce.

Their stories are important.

So is mine.

And so is yours.

It’s one of the things I enjoy most about this space - discovering new stories, new ways of thinking, new friends, new connections … even new books!

PS. Thank you to everyone who has subscribed to hear my musings. Although I am learning to write more for the joy of it, knowing you are interested matters.

“For millenniums, humans have told stories to connect, relate and weave imaginative truths that enable us to see one another more clearly with compassion and courage ... We tell stories because we are human. But we are also made more human because we tell stories.” - Amanda Gorman