Everybody Has a Story; Once Written It Can’t Be Erased

Headline is a written page of his life

TV talked in the background—Armstrong Stripped of Wins; Big Tex Ends StateFair in Fiery Demise—as we settled onto comfy chairs at our writing group’s favorite restaurant. We shared dismay over both front-page situations, but those stories were finished pieces. We met to work on stories in progress.

Near the bottom of my second cup of coffee, a stranger passing by asked if we were writers. Yes, even published writers. The stranger said he had written a book and added that he was the famous (infamous?) Lance’s adopted dad.

I claim my own connections to that celebrity: one time English teacher and neighbor. Since my father raised doubting, but not gullible, daughters, I vetted this man.

“Where did Lance go to middle school? What street did he live on?”

Correct answers to both.

The conversation was on. Or rather his story, the other side of the story we’ve all heard and read in the half dozen books about America’s cyclist—from Lance's own autobiography, to his mother’s version, to one written for 2^nd graders for a “CharacterBuilders Series.“

A new telling, written by this father, the father the cyclist claims is “deceitful,” could be the next big read. Every skirmish has two sides. This one is no different. 

To hear Dad Armstrong’s version, he pounded the pavement as a salesman to afford his wife and son every expensive, and desired, toy—including membership to a country club with an ambitious swim team. By the time Lance reached a double-digit age, he and friends were butterflying and lightning-stroking their team to victories. The dad confessed that writing revealed to himself the ah-ha truths that we all wish we had known when younger. It’s a story of a parent’s “what if's.” What if the family had continued church attendance? What if the dad had seen the danger in too young celebrity? In hearing Monday’s death knell, we thought of “what if’s.” What if he had come in 7th or 17th in France? Would his cancer survival have been less inspiring?

Even with new insight, this dad’s book won’t change the outcome. It might be met with disinterested shrugs, or his story might let us recognize pivotal choices that could have changed a future.

Cycling’s governing body has chosen to say that the Armstrong Era never officially happened. Their edict will erase him from the record books, but it won’t erase his life—good or bad. Thousands of stories in multiple languages have permanently preserved it.

We must write down
our stories to keep them.

The rest of us, whose lives are not the stuff of newspaper stories, haven’t such tangible sources to leave behind. We have to depend on our own photos in albums. (Photos that sometimes raise more questions than they answer. Where was this taken? Who are those people? What was happening?) Or oral recountings. (that are forgotten or changed in the retellings). Unless someone—ourselves—writes them down, our stories remain “I wonder if’s.”

Sometime ago, I committed to paper my family’s saga of burying our cat—the favorite story that is recited to every captive newcomer to the family. A sister challenged my story’s accuracy. Her version would have paid our brother a dime for the burying deed while I recorded the payment as a quarter. She’s probably right.

Without details written on the timeline of your life, the question of a dime or a quarter can’t be asked. Because no one will know the story, that a little brother was paid once by big sisters to bury the cat three times.

Consider what you wish you knew about your grandfather. About Great aunt Gertrude or your pioneer relative born during the 1800’s.  Think about the tales slipping away today as your parents grow older. What stories do your children not know about the early days of your marriage—stories you need to get down quickly before they are forgotten as though they never happened? For a start, try simply listing the topics of those stories. Share them with us here.

Keeping Your Appetite for Life

(reposted from my "lost in the black hole" web site: still a favorite book that I recommend)

Reading Paula's Butturini's Keeping The Feast put food on my mind.  Butturini peppered this memoir of her years in the news capitols of Europe with daily trips to street markets and the meals that resulted.  Her descriptions of her father’s polenta-making and husband John’s risotto, in addition to the repasts she prepared, read like a cookbook.   No matter that she included not a single recipe, she made me feel like I could whip up a quick pesto while a chicken roasts for dinner guests.

I want my cooking to be like Butturini’s, to be a time of energetic preparation that precedes family gathering at the table.  That is the way I grew up.  I can't remember eating a childhood meal alone.  Our family of six sat in appointed places and passed the dishes clockwise—meat, potatoes, vegetable, salad, always fresh bread.

We remained at the table beyond cleaning our plates to finish conversations awaited all day.  Mealtime talk covered the day in our family business, from which customers were dealing for a tractor to who paid an overdue account (details private to our kitchen).  Dad led analyses of the news headlines, answering our questions about why and how.  School occurrences, if warranted, got their attention, too.

That pattern of family meals continued in my home as our daughters grew up, but for the past decade I’ve broken the nourishing routine.  Not because I quit believing in the worth of good cooking and companionable meals, but because I’ve grown weary. 

I wanted to fix healthy dishes that filled and satisfied and that loaded me up with all the right nutrients.  Three times a day I went to my kitchen and symbolically tied on an apron, stood between open refrigerator doors, stared at the eggplant or zucchini and yellow squash, the green beans wilting in the plastic bag from the market, and pictured the plate all that bounty could make.  Then energy flagged.  I pulled out the “bag o’salad,”  chopped a cucumber and cheese, threw in cherry tomatoes, and doused all with bottled vinaigrette.  Quick and effortless won again.

This routine started when I began living alone after my husband’s death.  Resisting junk food but settling for uninspiring meals that, every few weeks, left me hungry for real dishes.

Recently all has changed.  My daughter and I decided to combine households.  We chose my house and furniture, but she maintained her routines.  That meant youthful exuberance and her customized cookbook.  She pours through its clipped recipes, insisting on trying all new ones each week.  Successes move to the permanent collection; less than stellar concoctions are summarily trashed.  Our shopping lists read fresh, whole, and for the most part organic.  Preparation may take an hour of chopping, pureeing, sauteing, and roasting, which cuts into my vegging time in front of the TV.

At first, unless guilt drove me to the kitchen to help, I puttered at the other end of the house until I heard sounds that meant a meal was ready.  Grudgingly, I have admitted that her menus rise above my salads and restaurant doggie bags.  I now join her at my own cutting board.  We perform a dance in our galley kitchen, do-si-doing around each other to adjust the heat under a skillet, to check an ingredient on the recipe du jour, to sip a wine chosen for the menu, all the while chatting about our day.

Recently a colleague asked how to make the vegetable dish I had taken to a carry-in supper.  The question delighted me because I hadn’t been sure anyone would care about roasted vegetables seasoned with only a few herbs and olive oil instead of mushroom soup cream sauce.  By the time I shared the simple directions, I felt enlivened in a way that eluded me in my quick salad days.  Paula Butturini defined the vitality I’m noticing in the truth she penned.  More than delicious food results from gathering in the kitchen to poach a fish or stir a fresh marinara sauce.  In Butturini’s words, “Cooking is part of keeping an appetite for life.”

Tomorrow, when forecasted threatening weather sets in, instead of opening a can of soup, I will saute an ancho chile with onions and green pepper then add leftover chicken and stock.  While it’s simmering, I may throw in those wilted carrots from the back of the fridge.  Parsley, fresh cilantro, and a squeeze of lime will finish a soup guaranteed to make dinner around our table more pleasant than the winds outside.