I love Halloween. You all know that. I love the Trick-R-Treaters decked out in costumes, the homes and yards decorated with fake cobwebs, skulls, witches, gravestones. Crunchy leaves crackle under your feet, and the trees are splashed with oranges, yellows, reds, and browns. (This year in particular seems so vibrant, beautiful, and crisp here in Portland.) In addition, I love the history of Halloween, All Hallows' Eve, Samhain: its bloody and ritualistic beginnings, its notion that the veil between the living and the dead is thinnest. Things creep in. Things creep out. Things are just plain creepy.
Most of all, I love the storytelling aspect of Halloween -- how this is relayed to us in literature, film, TV, music, art. One thinks of ghost stories told by candlelight on foggy, chilled evenings. You might even reflect back on remnants of summer, those urban legends told around campfires while drinking beer and eating S'mores. But what
really makes the story? Sure, it's the tale itself -- its tragic events, haunting specters, desolate locales, moonlit backdrops, and heart-thumping climaxes. But even more importantly, in my opinion, is the
storyteller in this equation. Does s/he whisper or shout, lean close, make eye contact? What cues, verbal and non-verbal, lend itself to this primal act of sharing? What instincts drive a good storyteller to reel the listener in, so they feel like they've tumbled down a ravine into the dark with the storyteller?
I get my storytelling instincts from my mother, Janice, and from my grandmother, Nellie. (Sadly, my grandma passed away from cancer when I was around nine years old.) Words can't express (oddly enough!) how much these two strong women have influenced my desire to be a writer. It's part DNA and part environment, as I do believe this gift was passed down through the blood *and* was passed down because of how often Mom and Grandma Nellie read to me. We'd sit close on the couch, and I'd flip the pages, and we'd be warm and cozy while also scared. My books' spines would crack apart because I'd make Mom and Grandma read stories over and over and over. This storytelling didn't stop in early childhood, either. One of my favorite memories is from when I was maybe thirteen, and Mom took Jordan, Aaron, and me camping along the Wisconsin River. We'd canoe throughout the day, and stop along beaches at night to pitch our tent and relax by a bonfire under the summer stars. Mom made up this story that she continued each night of the trip -- it was part
Deliverance, part
The Hills Have Eyes, and part
Friday the 13th. (Should Mom have been telling her three young kids about hillbilly murderers stalking a family through the woods and rivers on a camping trip? Debatable! But we sure loved it!) I also remember sitting around fires in our backyard in Lake Geneva, and how this one night she told a really kick-ass werewolf story. (This werewolf in a small Wisconsin town was stalking a family that was sitting out enjoying a fire in their backyard -- I sense a theme here.)
More often than not, when I think of my mother's gift for storytelling I think about movies. Let me explain: Mom and Dad would have date nights, and we'd stay home with Stephanie the babysitter (or by ourselves, when I was older). Sometimes I managed to stay awake until they returned, or sometimes I dozed off, but there were several occasions where I'd stir, interest piqued when they walked through the door. Sometimes perched on the edge of my bed, but often huddled comfortably on the couch, Mom would lean in and use her dramatic gestures (the South Side of Chicago Italian in her) as she re-told me the plots of the movies. I'm not just talking a quick summary. I'm talking a detailed, sometimes embellished or changed, rich, and descriptive account of the story, and the characters' motivations. She'd pause naturally, instinctively, for dramatic effect, and would rush through certain parts or slow other parts down depending on the needs and tones of given scenes. I remember that old red couch we had forever, the fireplace sometimes crackling, the glow of accent lights all around us and on our faces. I fell in love with movies then, and maybe that's why I love the artistry of filmmaking too. I'm a fiction writer first (some might argue, Gus included, that I'm a poet in a fiction writer's disguise), but I sure do love how scenes are edited together, what actors are cast, what music is used, how colors bleed and shade the emotional tapestries and physical settings. Like many writers, I write
toward images. I get images in my mind, paintings or photographs almost, and I explore my way to their meaning, to the moment that camera has gone "click" and trapped them in my heart. I need to understand these captured moments. I need to make them a little less haunting and haunted. So I write stories.
I'll end with this: there was something special and sacred in the shared love of storytelling between mother and son, the teller and listener joined rapturously. Jordan, Aaron, and Dad were in the house, but this was about the two of us; the rest of the world fell away. What mattered was that we understood our roles and embraced them; Mom got to relive the stories and I got to imagine them before actually seeing them....And for the record, you better believe I've watched each and every movie that Mom came home raving about! I most remember:
Silver Bullet,
The Believers,
Fatal Attraction,
Top Gun, and
Starman. Happy (Almost) Halloween, everyone.
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