Connections

Back in the late 1940s I remember, countless times, hanging over the front seat of the family car, as my father drove through the summer night (no air conditioning in those days), and beseeching my mother, "Tell me a story about when you were a little girl."

And she would.

Perhaps it was about her adventures growing up on a farm, or maybe it was the story about getting her tonsils removed but not getting a new tricycle as older brother Jack had, or it could be the story about traveling in the family car on the way to a vacation spot, just as we were doing, but on dirt roads instead of paved ones. There were many, but these were my favorites.

I think what I loved most about those stories was knowing that my mother had been as little as me, and that the things she experienced were things I was sure I would experience, too, because the way she described her feelings were almost exactly how I felt as I listened to her stories. 

When I began facilitating my OWL-circle about 55 years later, there were several women who were sure no one in their family would be interested in hearing stories from their lives. They soon found out differently! In fact, one woman now serves as "Grandma" to her granddaughter's Girl Scout troop. (Her duty is to bring her notebook of life stories to overnight camp-outs and read to the girls before lights out.)

Many of us think we have led fairly average lives, which we think are uninteresting to others. But the truth is actually the opposite. Our average lives represent the times in which we have lived, and there is a connectedness that comes from those experiences that is unbreakable.

Consider the changes in the common day-to-day experience that have occurred in your lifetime. Take the telephone, for example. When I was a girl, we (like so many families) had one black telephone that was attached to the wall in the hall and we shared the line--called a party line--with other users.

Oh how I remember as a small child listening in to those conversations. "I can still hear a voice saying, "Martha, I think someone else is on the phone. Hello?? Is someone there? Get off the phone, do you hear? This is a private conversation." Of course I didn't--I was fascinated by the secrets they were sharing--so I stayed mouse quiet until the gossipers continued.

Right now, if you are one of those who remember those times, you are experiencing that feeling of connectedness. Or, if you're younger and have no shared recollection, you may be thinking how strange that time must have been compared to your experience with a pink Princess Slimline phone and private line in your bedroom. Or more recently, but soon to be outdated, a wallet sized cellular phone with unlimited txtmgs. 

The point is, sharing our life stories is one of the ways we share our traditions and rites of passage.

Writing prompt: How old were you when you got your first telephone? How did the telephone impact your life?

Comments

[Paula Yost]

Love the new blog site... what a talented bunch of broads!

Reading the Connections writing prompt, I suddenly realized I was a grown woman moving into a home of my own before I finally got my "own" phone. Prior to that, I used my parents' phones, dorm phones, and shared one pink princess phone and a 2-bedroom apartment with 5 other gals. My, how things change...

[Susan Albert]

Like Paula, I was married and living in my own home when I got "my" first phone. It was a white phone that hung on the wall over the kitchen counter, and I thought it was a very "modern" thing. I used to sit on my red Cosco kitchen stool (stylishly retro now--but it was NEW then, in the late 50s!)and talk to my MIL and my mother every day. Thinking about it now, I realize how important those connections were to me. Oh, I would love to hear those voices again!

[Lee]

So true, so true, Joyce! Times have changed -- and are constantly changing. Keeping up with the stories that chronicle those changes can be a remarkable journey in and of itself. Being one who is always looking for new writing prompt material (watch the 2nd & 4th Tues Herstory blog entry for more) I loved your post! It has the obvious prompts for all, but I found some perhaps not so obvious prompts as well!

[Patricia Pando]

Wow! I think my cell phone was the first phone I ever had that I wasn't sharing.

My family always had a phone, but the prompt certainly brings up memories. The first phone number I ever learned was my grandmother's in about 1944 in Amarillo, Texas. 8010. Then it was 6-8010,then DR6-8010. When she died in 1986 it was 806-376-8010.

My other grandparents, out on the farm, had a crank phone on a party-line. One night a week everyone on the line rang on and my grandfather played requests on his fiddle.

Thanks,
P

[Zaynab D'Elia]

Joyce: Your picture of riding in the car begging your mom to tell stories of her childhood suddenly brought to mind my own very first interest in story telling. During the economic recession of the early 1950's it was easier for women to find a service job than it was for the returning mass of GI's to find a job. So, about four in the afternoon, my Dad would drive my mother to work at a restaurant, and my brother and I would pile in the back of the car. My mother would step out alone into that parking lot and we sadly watched her leave. Then, Dad would begin with one of his stories, and we were transported to another time and place, listening to his "son of a preacher man" tales, complete with tales of his father's fire and brimstone sermons, his own antics as a teenager, and many many life episodes as he grew up with my five uncles and two aunts. Thanks for prompting that memory and giving me a clue on why I love storytelling so much. In peace, Zaynab