It had been a fabulous Mother’s Day, but not one I would
have initially planned as my perfect day.
My kitchen was a disaster: dishes and pans and wine glasses littered our
counter tops. Toys were spread over the
coffee table like art-imitating-life-gone-messy. Outside, we lounged, exhausted, in porch
chairs around the patio table. The
smaller cousins raced around the back yard, screaming and tossing bright balls
in the air.
Snuggled in her daddy’s lap, though, was my oldest
girl. As the adults talked and laughed,
she watched our faces, and I knew what would happen next. It’s the same almost every time we have
visitors.
“Can we tell stories?”
And so it began.
Uncle Eric launched into an embarrassing tale complete with sound
effects and voice-overs. Aunt Emily made
us roar with laughter and shake our heads in sympathy. Nana recounted a childhood fiasco that had us
giggling and tearing up. We told family
stories – and what we remembered of extended
family stories – until sunset, with my seven-year-old listening and laughing
and staring into the middle-distance, contemplating all she’d heard.
Though our stories that night were lighthearted and silly,
they were also universal. As families,
as cultural beings, we tell our stories, often passing them down through
generations, teaching and guiding our little ones with shared history. Sometimes, the stories are about a hardship
that someone we know and love has overcome; sometimes they’re about failure,
loss, or trial. We remember details of
hilarity and heartbreak, sweetness and success.
It all comes out in the retelling, and through it, our histories have
meaning.
I read an article a few months
back in The New York Times, titled, TheStories That Bind Us. The author,
Bruce Feiler (who has also written a book about the subject: The Secrets of Happy Families) had been
researching the secrets behind what makes families and other organizations
function better. From board rooms to dinner tables to military bases, Feiler
searched for the common bridges that made groups work well together. He found resilience, camaraderie, strong bonds,
and a shared sense of teamwork among groups that practiced, of all things, lots
and lots of storytelling.
It turns out that kids (as well as employees, soldiers, and
companies) tend to gain a whole passel of benefits from something as simple as
having what Feiler calls a Family Narrative.
When children have heard (and heard, and heard again) the stories of
oscillating hardship and success, disaster and recovery, they inherit a sense
that their own lives aren’t about to be ruined by one misstep or embarrassment
or failure. They learn that we’re all a
part of the whole, and that we’ll have troubles for sure. But we’ll also have stories to tell about the
wonderful moments mixed in among the difficulties. Life is a mosaic of dark and light, and when
we share the story of our great-grandparents’ wars or immigrations or
recessions, we share the truth: we’ll survive.
The sharing of stories isn’t just something we do after a
family meal, it’s a way to connect and communicate without lecturing. It’s a way to build our kids into strong,
resilient, happy human beings who look around them and see possibility rather
than defeat.
So tell your stories.
Create your family narrative.
Recount your histories, both good and bad, so that your children will
know. And in the telling, they’ll gain
much more than a bit of entertainment.
They’ll be instilled with a personal history that can bolster them into
adulthood.
