Storytelling
I’m swiveling.
Sitting in a high-backed, black office chair — one of ten in a set — elbows propped on a table made of the lightest pine, knotted in just the right places. This is an official looking workspace. My bare toes graze plush carpet, my laptop is well lit, but my pages are empty.
I’m swiveling.
They talk around me. Their voices wind and thread and blend like their materials. Photos and stamps and stickers and papers and scraps piled and strewn and so very well used.
I’m away with my girlfriends at a scrapbooking weekend. Their mounds of completed pages — 12 x 12 versions of memories made forever prettied and captured and documented — rise. A visual reminder of time well spent.
My blank documents are their very own visual of the words I can’t seem to be able to put to paper.
This group of women have been coming here for ten years, scrapping – and eating and drinking and crying and ohmygoodness laughing — their way through vacations and birthdays, first days of kindergarten and high school graduations, babies’ births and parents’ deaths.
The first time I came I felt the need to confess, I’m not scrapbooking. I used to. But now, I’ll be writing, I said, wincing and wondering and hoping that different was just fine.
And what I saw was, indeed, differences. Their creative on display, cut and cropped and matted and labeled until their story was told, while my space remained bare.
But today, as I (finally) start filling my own pages — fingers splayed, words tapped, moments documented – I see what was there all along.
Women archiving their families’ memories — bound in the way that we all know best – by stories told.
Galit Breen is a Minnesota writer. On any given day she can be found juggling three kids, one husband, one puggle, and her laptop. Galit writes women's fiction, is the series editor of Pens and Paint, an anthology of children's poetry and artwork, and is co-producing Listen to Your Mother Twin Cities 2013. Galit blogs at These Little Waves and - it has to be said - tweets and Facebooks a lot.
11 Responses to “Storytelling”
I want to join you! Sounds like such a fun time to be creative, be with good friends, and document a lifetime of memories!
I could not love THIS or YOU more. :-)
As I read your words I heard your voice…like always. I love it :)
So beautiful. And I believe we all have our own medium for telling our stories – and yours is the written word and just masterful.
[...] have a post up at Moonfrye about the magic of getting away — with your girlfriends, and working on what you [...]
You have a beautiful way of keeping memories – your words are just as beautiful as a scrapbook. xo
I love the idea of scrapbooking. The closest thing I come to now is getting those photobooks made. I love to get away with friends — if even just on a porch for an afternoon.
I love the end product of scrapbooking, but it is definitely not my speed. I’d love to get away with some girlfriends to just go dancing for the night. I miss doing that so much.
Thanks, Galit. Beautifully written, as always.
I think it’s all about the perspective from which we archive. It’s almost like we have to set the record straight — this is how our lives happened, let it be remembered this way. It’s not the way facebook has it, it’s not a timeline. It’s how it actually was, with our feelings and our colors, and our words all over it.
It’s a nice idea. Maybe i’ll do a scrapbook this year -;)
This truly could not be any more beautiful. I love the imagery, the girl’s weekend, the eating and drinking and laughing. And I love that you know how important your words are. I have always admired scrapbookers, but have found that this blogging, this writing, allows me to be much more of myself and tell my story in my way. And telling stories in the way that fits us is so important. I love the way you tell yours. xoxo
Every post seems like a scrapbook page – the words are so visual!!
I also scrapbook, but only 3 pages a kid per year. 9 pages total. It’s all I can do, it’s usually done on summer vacation in the evenings, and it’s enough for me. Otherwise, it’s all writing for me.