What do the 1970s, Pete Seeger, Norway, Unicycles, beasts, bugs, and campfires have in common?
Writer Kirsten Nilsen sheds some light on that and shares her family’s own brand of storytelling.
by Kirsten Nilsen, posted on January 21st, 2010 in The Storytellers Issue
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The stories started as a desperate act of a toddler avoiding naps. Our oldest has been philosophically opposed to sleep since she was very small, and she quickly learned that constant talking would keep her awake on long car rides. ‘Tell me a story, Mommy. Tell me a story about when you were small.”
And thus we would enter into the world of 1970s childhood, of half-remembered images of silliness with brothers, of adventures on wooded trails or sun scorched beaches. Story after story, mile after mile, I would tell the tales and she would giggle and question and shriek in outrage at particularly mean acts of sibling sabotage.
My children have been introduced in this way to the art of the story, and they have grown used to stories weaving themselves into the fabric of our lives. By bringing storytelling into the daily routines of our family, we make it as central to our lives as eating, as reading, as wiggling.
The stories themselves take all forms: recently we shared with them Pete Seeger’s Birds, Beasts Bugs & Fishes (Little & Big), and told them about a musician recording these tunes for his kids. They were able to recognize tunes and lyrics from more modern singers like Elizabeth Mitchell. (Both albums were released on Smithsonian’s incredible Folkways label.)
We tell stories to reinforce lessons learned in the day— maybe about the time Daddy learned that sitting on the roof of his house instead of sharing his unicycle with friends was self-defeating behavior. “But Daddy! Then nobody got to ride the unicycle!!!” We might tell stories to make tough subjects like slavery more accessible, or make up silly poems to while away the minutes in the doctor’s office.
We sometimes have to tailor our stories to each child’s age—at 3 they are very into the cautionary tales, while the subtlety of this type of story is lost on the baby—but we are always amazed at how young they start listening, wanting to laugh along, wanting to be part of the ‘circle around the campfire.’
My husband is from Norway, and his family are many miles away. The stories he is able to share with our kids about his growing up years bring the kids closer to Norway, closer to that part of their genetic makeup, so that they can imagine themselves hiking the trails high above a fjord, or skiing to and from school daily. These stories somehow bring their faraway family so much closer.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, my side of the family is close: very close. My children see their grandparents almost daily, and share in their stories, and retell those stories with cousins we see on the weekends. In this case, the stories they are told are living stories—my mother can drive the kids past the house their great grandmother was born in, and my dad can point out the hill where he sledded into a stop sign and ended up needing his spleen removed.
This duality between near and far, between old and new, between serious and silly is echoed in the oral tradition that has existed since the very beginnings of civilization. Since Viking times, heck, since the cavemen—the only way to pass on the family history has been the ability to tell a story. And the storyteller’s audience also learns: they learn the art of the story. They learn the ability to follow a narrative that wends its way through adversity, through love and heartbreak, through moral dilemma. And through this process, you have created a listener. The ability to hear, to truly hear, another’s story is the ability to tap into human communication at its most basic level.
By sharing the stories of our lives with the people we care about, we experience our history, hopes, and humanity. By raising the next generation of storytellers, we are giving our children a way to make and participate in history. My husband and I don’t think of ourselves as artists. And yet, daily we participate in the creation of art—of storytelling.
