There are stories and history all around us. We know this, of course, but do we appreciate the significance of it and what those stories can accomplish? Like little wildflowers, one seems pretty insignificant. But taken together, a whole field of them can modify a landscape.
This is Bruno Signorini. Every afternoon, his daughter pushes Bruno’s wheelchair down the street so he can sit with a group of older people who congregate to visit and watch the tourists.
Bruno in his usual afternoon spot. Like a number of the residents of Certaldo Alto, he lives in the house he was born in. His daughter lives near as does his grandson, my electrician.
Bruno doesn’t talk much. But he has a very expressive face and gentle, big brown eyes. He’s always wearing an immaculate shirt, often in a gingham print, the white checks so bright they glow. If you ask him how he is, he always answers, “Contento.” I am content.
But one day, Bruno began to talk. I’m not sure how it all started, but he was talking to me in Italian. His daughter began to translate. Bruno was telling me about being drafted into the Italian army during WWII, when he was eighteen years old. Two years later, when Italy broke away from the Nazis, Bruno was among the 710,000 Italian military POWs transported as forced labor to Germany. That’s a statistic. An old one at that. It conveys almost nothing to us. Tomorrow, Bruno promised me, he would bring things to show me.
A lot of pictures like this in picture boxes around the world. I think Bruno is the one on the back left with the ink dot on his chest.
I made sure I didn’t miss that appointment. Sure enough, Bruno had a little plastic bag. Out came a metal dog tag on a twine cord. Stalag III A. Here was his identification card issued by the POW camp consisting of a metal-framed picture of him as a young man. Here was an official passport-type document, a swastika on the front, showing to which camp he was assigned, with pages for them to note if they moved him. There were a few pictures from before he was interred, pictures of him with his Italian mates. They could have been young American soldiers but for the uniforms.
Bruno’s dog tag
There were a few letters back and forth between Bruno and his mother. She was allowed to send two packages each year. He thanked her for the food, but reminded her that it had to travel a long way and that many things wouldn’t keep, so she shouldn’t send fruit. But the figs made it, and they were delicious. He asked her to send flour and yellow flour (corn meal) because they were eating nothing but greens.
Bruno’s mother saved his letters as he did hers and now they are united in his plastic bag along with the other articles from a long-gone past. But I think Bruno’s suffering softened him into a kind soul. The look in his eyes now is nothing like the one on the face of the young Italian soldier. Bruno appreciates life and is “contento” to sit in the sun with his friends and be allowed an occasional gelato by his attentive daughter.
Letters to Mom, the I.D. card, and the inside of the identity document.
Stories like Bruno’s are all around us all over the world, and their value cannot be overestimated. Not only do they connect us across continents to those who at one time were considered the “enemy,” but just as importantly, they connect us across generations.
I believe younger generations are starved for living history like Bruno’s. I believe they long for real heroes who embody courage, justice, and that almost-forgotten word, honor. Some of my greatest memories are of sitting with my great-grandmother, who could remember her grandmother, a Civil War widow.
How the Nazis kept up with their vast number of prisoners.
But it’s not just older people who have stories to share. We all do. Even your ten-year-old granddaughter has stories. So many children are never really listened to. What they are saying between the lines is never really heard. It’s the same with all of us. Brandon Stanton, creator of Humans of New York, says that for most people, to have someone wiling to really listen to you for an hour and a half is very rare.
I challenge you to really listen to one other person this week and jot down a story they tell you. With their permission, you can share it in some way. Or maybe it will only be between the two of you. But think about how the tiny threads of that story, like little wildflower roots, reach into your heart. Like Bruno’s letters to his mom about flour. Like his “contento” reply.
Stories lift us, connect us, remind us of our fragile lives, intertwined like a field of wildflowers. Stories remind us that none of us are “ordinary,” that all of us carry a burden, that each of us is unique.
Finding our stories . . . and ourselves.
–Alison
There are so many reasons. Let’s look at a few.
You’ve overcome a traumatic experience.
You’ve made peace with a difficult relationship. (Mom memoirs are very big.)
You’ve dealt with a health or life-threatening issue.
You’ve had an amazing pet. (Seriously. We love to celebrate our incredible animals.)
You’ve done something exciting, dangerous, exotic in your life.
You’ve rebooted your life and begun again. And maybe again and again.
You’ve overcome addiction.
You’ve had an enlightening spiritual experience.
You’ve traveled or lived in an interesting place.
You’ve taken care of a special child or other relative.
Ok, I’m stopping there because ten is a round number, but there are plenty more.
Now, why should anyone give two cents for your story? Here’s why.
They’ve also had a traumatic experience and are looking for ways to heal.
They also have a difficult relationship.
They also have/have had a health issue—it doesn’t have to be the same one as yours.
People love pets.
We love to read about exciting adventures from our safe recliners.
We dream of beginning again.
A lot of us have an addiction.
A lot of us long for spiritual enlightenment.
A lot of us dream of traveling or living in an interesting place, or we just like to read about them from our recliners.
A lot of us are caregivers.
Those who know me know this is my passion: the power of the individual story—yours, mine. The Village Writing School is build on this foundational tenet: your story matters. We want to help you learn to tell it in the most readable, publishable way.
My own stories are historical novels in which some important theme plays out in the life of a fictional character. I always said that I had no interest in writing a memoir of my own. I don’t want to slog through all that again. Once was enough.
But now I’m changing my mind. Now I AM considering writing a memoir after so many friends suggested I do it.
I remember all the great memoir instructors who have taught for the VWS over the last five years. I always listened carefully so that I could help my students find their arc, their inciting incident, their theme, etc. Now here I am, facing all that for myself, and I feel like a kid on the first day of school. Excited but wary.
I bet I’m not the only one.
Eighty percent of Americans say they have a story to tell, and the majority of those stories are personal stories. Since this newsletter goes primarily to readers and writers, the figure for you all is probably even higher.
We read to experience other lives, and when those other lives have points that intersect with our own lives or dreams, then we are hooked. Find what is important to you that also strikes a universal chord. Then, all you have to do is tell a good story.
But, how do we begin? Well, I’m not supposed to announce this yet, so I’m not. (Hint: it’s in October.) But the Village Writing School is going to help those of us who want to tell our personal stories and don’t know exactly where to start. And that includes me.
Finding our stories . . . and ourselves.
Alison
P.S. Which items in the first list above would you write about if you were going to write about your life?
Prose was (almost) dognapped!
Whether they wanted her for themselves or to sell into slavery, I don’t know. I don’t even know for sure that my suspicions are correct. But I feel strongly that they are.
We were on our way home. My mom, aunt, cousin, myself, and Prose. Prose was in my lap, checking out the train for victims to ambush with her cute eyeroll and magnificient tailwag. The seats across the aisle from us were empty except for one young woman. Her multi-colored hair and multiple piercings didn’t matter to Prose or to me. I was hardly noticing as she and Prose began to make squeaky noises back and forth.
Prose is always ready to get into the carrier for another adventure with my mom.
Prose is unusual in Europe. They have not bred poodles down this small over here, and many people have told me that they’ve never seen one like her. So I wasn’t surprised when the young woman asked where she came from, where we were from, etc. I was a little taken aback when she asked how much she cost—never had that question before. She got up from her seat and took Prose off my lap, took her back to her seat. The train was moving, so I wasn’t seriously alarmed, but something began to feel off to me. This woman was too intense. She was asking too many questions. It was like she was writing Prose’s resume.
Before the next stop, I got Prose back and put her in her carrier, where she’s happy to ride if the end is left open. The young woman got up and went to the middle of the car, where she had a long, intense conversation with an older man. She apparently knew him but they weren’t traveling together despite there being three empty seats around her. My cousin observed her and leaned forward. “We’d better watch our dog.” I nodded.
Prose thinks everyone took the train because she did.
The girl came back to her seat and made several telephone calls on her cell phone, talking low. Then she went to stand between the cars, where she had a serious conversation with yet another older man that she knew but was not traveling with. It was beginning to feel like a ring.
Not that I think they were focusing on dogs. I think they were focusing on tourists and whatever they might be able to lift. I zipped Prose into her carrier and slipped the shoulder strap over my head.
Train workers pause for Prose.
I admit that I haven’t worried much about Prose being stolen. I worry more about our being attacked by big dogs on the loose when she’s out on her leash. Often, when my mom has the walker, we sit Prose in her carrier in the basket on the walker and my mom toodles along. At this moment on the train, I saw how easily anyone could grab the carrier and dash away, immediately lost in the crowd. And there would be nothing any of us could do about it.
Imagining this scenerio gave me cold chills, and I realized that we needed to be cautious all the way home because these people could follow us. Then the girl asked me if she could use my cell phone to call her mother. Again, this has never happened to me in eight months of riding the train with strangers. Now, she’s been talking half the time on this phone, but she explains that she is out of minutes.
I was not so worried about losing the phone as I was that she’d install some sort of tracking app or get my number and be able to do something nefarious with it. I mumbled some incomprehensible English about why I didn’t think my phone would work for her. Shortly, she made a call on her own phone.
It’s important not to be so paranoid that I miss moments like this.
At this point, we four old ladies put our heads together and planned a course of action for getting all our luggage off the train without turning loose of Prose or turning our backs on anything.
Of course, it was all a tempest in a teapot. We exited the train with all our belongings intact and never saw the girl or her two shadowy companions again.
There’s a lot to unpack here:
1. Listen to your instincts. Don’t be talking nonstop. You want to hear that instinct when it whispers. That’s how tourists get robbed. Not paying attention.
2. Be aware and cautious but don’t let fear paralyze you and keep you from living your life on your own terms.
3. If you read to this point you are living proof that . . . dog stories are popular. If you have one to write, do it.
4. Stories are everywhere. I could write a whole novel right now about a dognapping. Even though, in fact, the whole thing might have been my imagination.
Finding our stories . . . and ourselves.
Alison
My cousin Janice is a surgical nurse. She has worked very hard all her life and still has six years to go before retirement. Until last year, she had never been out of the U.S. She’s a saver—one of the most frugal people I know, sensible in every way. Not what you would call a dreamer.
Several years ago, Janice worked a jigsaw puzzle. The picture was a little village on a bluff above the ocean. Pastel houses clinging to the sides of a steep ravine that ended in a tiny, turquoise harbour surrounded by a rocky coast. The caption read: Cinque Terre, Italy.
The Cinque Terre coast is impressive even without the villages.
Janice wrote to me a few months ago to say that she was bringing her mom to visit my mom. She sent me a list of places she was interested in visiting, and one was Cinque Terre. She had not forgotten it.
I didn’t know about the jigsaw puzzle, but I checked into the area on the Mediterranean coast. Because they would be flying out of Pisa, it made sense to put Cinque Terre as the last stop on our itinerary.
They landed, and we hit the ground running (mostly to keep up with my mom, who can flat book it on her walker). The Leaning Tower, Venice, Naples, the Isle of Capri, Pompeii, even three days in Switzerland. And finally, Cinque Terre.
This is the actual puzzle.
Cinque means “five” in Italian. Five fishing villages lined up the rocky coast. I knew most of them are steep and not handicapped friendly, so I decided that my mom and I would just take a boat ride and see them from afar. Janice and her mom set off to explore by themselves. By now, Janice had told me about the puzzle and even shown me a picture of it. I hoped she would get to see that same view.
She did. But more than that, she spent an afternoon in Riomaggiore, exploring its tiny backstreets, having a pizza with her mom in a little trattoria. She entered into the landscape she had studied so minutely while working the jigsaw puzzle. She told me it gave her chills, that it was the perfect ending to their trip.
This is what she will remember long after the cathedrals and the walled, medieval villages and even the amazing food have faded into one blur.
The puzzle town in real life. Riomaggiore.
This is a common experience for writers. For we begin with imagination. Sometimes we do the research first, but more often we wait to see if this story idea is going to come alive before we commit to the expense of a trip. I wrote a whole novel set in Strasbourg before I ever saw its half-timbered houses, though I could describe the giant beams held together with wooden pegs, the walls insulated with clay and chopped straw, each one whitewashed and brightened with folk art symbols.
Several writers have told me that when they finally stood before the piece of art, the monastery, the concentration camp around which their story was created, they cried.
You may be a surgical nurse or anything else. But to live in the imagination is to think like a storyteller.
These streets just say, “Wander . . . wander . . .”
To be curious. To embrace mystery. Even to go in search of it, whether it’s across the ocean or around the corner. To look beyond the daily commute and the scrubs in the laundry into a strange little village in a jigsaw puzzle and to imagine what might be down that alley, around that corner, what sights and smells are common to the people who live there and what are their worries and joys and fears.
“Only” the world of imagination, but it is also the beginning of adventure, of reflection, of connection. Whatever your life’s journey, a jigsaw puzzle may turn out to lead to the highlight of your trip.
Finding our stories . . . and ourselves.
–Alison
I think we need to pay more attention. As a writer, I should be all about seeing connections, deeper meanings, reflections, allusions. And yet, how often do all of us keep our antennae retracted like a snail half out of its shell?
I have a new mantra:
This is tourist season in one of the most touristy parts of the world. In the winter, in Tuscany, you can go on twenty train rides and not hear any English. In the summer, half the crowded train is American. Even if they don’t talk, I know them by their Vera Bradley and Saks bags.
Most of these people are showing signs of sensory overload. “Americans think we’re such a small country,” my friend who works at the hotel said, her tone a little insulted. “They think they can do Florence and Pisa in the same day.”
I stood up for us. I said it was not easy to get here from the U.S. and that many people consider this the trip of a lifetime. Naturally they want to see all they can.
I believe that’s why we take hundreds of pictures. At some level, we sense that we need to reflect on this moment, to see more deeply into this place, this people, this history, but we don’t have time. So we make the pictures and videos, hoping we will someday will have time.
But how long has it been since you sat down with your vacation pictures and really gave yourself the opportunity to reconnect with that experience, reliving the scents and the weather and the vibe of the place. Never? I spent a small fortune having all my travel videos converted and uploaded to a private YouTube channel so I could watch them over here. Ask me how many I’ve watched.
Most days, my adventures in Tuscany consist of deciphering food labels and fighting mosquitoes. But when anyone visits, I become a tourist, and I look forward to those intervals just as much as if I were making an overnight flight. Maybe more, because I’m not the one making the overnight flight.
Right now, I’m in tourist mode for two weeks with two of my favorite people in the world, my cousin and aunt. My mom and I have looked forward to this visit for months. Janice has never been to Italy, so we’re doing a sweep, though I cut her list in half and vetoed Rome and anything south. For that, she’ll have to come back next year.
Even so, there are many things that I love and want to show her and many things I haven’t seen myself that I want to see with her. So, I guess we’ll make a ton of pictures.
But if half the adventure is in the reflection, then what does it really mean to reflect? Here’s a partial list:
- To be aware, and amused by, the small, quirky things all around us (such as that guy in medieval dress with the motorcycle tattoo) for we are an eccentric, paradoxical species.
- To watch how people react (and to learn from both good and bad examples).
- To have our eyes open to beauty and creativity, even in the poppies in the train tracks or the street art on the sides of abandoned buildings.
- To understand that everyone has burdens and to cultivate an attitude of patience and compassion, whether it’s the mailman who always leaves your mailbox half open or the French ticket agent who snarled at you because you bought your train tickets in Italy.
- To look at the deeper meaning of simple things, how a jar of new peach jam or a handmade gelato, speaks of bounty, of tradition, of artistry, of love.
- To recognize that we are all writers. We are crafting the narrative of our life. We are all painters. We are painting our own portraits as surely as Dorian Gray did. Everyday, we have an opportunity to make our story more thoughtful, more meaningful. Everyday, we can make our portraits wiser and more gentle.
The truth is that we can practice these thought patterns anywhere, even at home—especially at home. Because to a reflective person, life is the adventure.
So whether you have a vacation or a staycation, make it yours in a deeper way—own it— through reflecting on it.
Alison
