My father is one of the greater loves of my life. He has a kind heart and a gentle soul. He is also a lot to handle most of the time. Growing up with him was a combination of fun and difficult. The world is his stage and it can be hard, especially as a young person, to be around someone who is constantly performing. His stories are large and grand and sometimes rambling. They also change often.
Suffice to say each time I hear a story some things remain the same while other things become more...
more detailed, more inviting, more over-the-top.
More.
We call him Big Fish
If you’ve seen the movie you know exactly what I mean by that.
If you have not seen the movie, you need to! We're southern born and bred, which means storytelling is in our blood. I feel like being detail oriented is a personality thing,
but it's a southern thing as well. We aren't in such a hurry down there so we have time to pay attention to detail...
hear the details, take in the details, share the details...
the more details the better...
you get the idea. I grew up on stories.
Some of my favorite memories are sitting at my great-grandma's feet listening to her stories.
She had white hair, a belly laugh that would knock you over and curvy swollen knuckles on farm hands that told a story of their own. She was fiercely independent and a force to be reckoned with. She told stories of farm living, hardship and death.
She had known death and monumental loss like no other. She raised five children on her own during a time when divorce was practically unheard of.
My Peepaw (Tilman Jr., most of his family called him Junior) was one of those children. He would take me for long rides.
He would call the house and ask my mother if I was available to go for a ride (more like inform her that he was on his way). We would ride around through the old neighborhoods and he would point things out to me and tell me stories.
It was during one of those cherished rides that he confided his final wishes with me.
His beloved, my Nonnie, is one of my favorite people on the planet.
I grew up spending a lot of time alone with her listening to her stories.
My favorite stories were the ones about her and her best friend, Patsy, and the shenanigans they would get into together.
I would sit for hours and listen to her stories while she crocheted or painted and I would do my sticker books.
My Nonnie and Peepaw are my mom’s parents so it’s no surprise she was also a great story teller.
My mom was one of my soulmates and we would talk for hours on end sharing stories.
So. Much. Detail.
I used to ask her to tell me her stories again and again.
I wanted to hear the stories of how she dug deep and found her courage and left behind her trauma.
I wanted to hear again how that bravery led her to my daddy, her soul mate.
I wanted to hear again and again how he asked her to marry him so many times that she had finally said, "next time I’ll say no", so he arranged a wedding at The Chapel of Happiness in San Diego and called her an hour before they were to be married.
She wore a pink maternity dress with me in her belly and was sick to her stomach.
He wore patchwork bellbottoms and a butterfly collar and lost her ring in the coke machine when he pulled the change out of his pocket.
I wanted to hear again and again how they wrote one another love letters while he was overseas.
I wanted to hear again how in a moment when he thought he had to let her go forever he tossed all of her letters over the side of the ship and watched them sink into the vast ocean while his vast heart sank with them.
I wanted to hear again and again my birth story…
A story of how another generation of story teller was born.
I notice details.
I crave the details.
I share the details.
I hold on to the details.
I’m a story teller, born and bred.