What prompted this blog entry was a cover story in the SJ LIFE section of the Sunday Courier Post, Aug. 5.
"That same communal spirit flutters within the Butterfly, a monthly storytelling forum hosted by Perkins Center for the Arts in Collingswood. Held on the fourth Tuesday of each month except July and August....competitive storytelling forums such as The Moth, World Cafe' Live in Philadelphia."
Pop-up events are taking place in libraries, book stores, nursing homes, and festivals all over South Jersey.
This particular article definitely caught my attention because one of my dearest and longest friendships has been with a professional storyteller named Dorothy Stanaitis. She is one of the performers who has worked in Summer Camps, Nursing Homes, Senior Centers, Nursery Schools and Libraries. Last year, I attended one of her programs "Immigrant Girls" at a Friends Meeting House in Woodstown.
Although I have not been a professional storyteller, as have several of my friends, including Tom Clapham, retired from Cherry Hill Library and a long-ago, long-time storyteller and member of Storytelling Guild, I have written a number of short stories and have both a great respect for and interest in the STORY.
Needless to say, we all tell stories, with varying degrees of skill, all the time. Just recently at a coffee house, I was sitting with a close friend and two strangers and we were exchanging stories. One of the strangers told us how she and her retired firefighter met in an online dating forum. The retired firefighter and my friend exchanged stories about their recent knee replacement experiences. As our conversations moved along the internet romance story led to a story from my friend about a woman she knew who was currently in Turkey meeting the family of a young man she had met in an online dating forum. This reminded me of a story from my long long ago days as an ESL teacher.
One day when I showed up to tutor three children from India, a small vivacious, blonde woman in her sixties emerged from a red convertible and begged me to help her get into the house and talk to the children. I said that of course, I could not do that, that I was their English language tutor only and couldn't compromise them in any way. She insisted she was their mother. I went into the house and asked the children and they said she was NOT their mother.
Back outside, further inquiries elicited the following details. The father of the children had met the woman when he worked as a bus boy at a local diner. She was recently widowed. He was here in the U.S. alone on a work visa. He was somewhat younger. He wooed her and they dated, then fell in love and married. The marriage made him a citizen and he brought his children over.
Meanwhile he got a better job at a hospital and bought a house, but no longer saw his American wife. She was abandoned, baffled and had no idea what had happened. She had expected to move into the house and be a mother to the children.
The children were not going to let her in, I explained gently and regretfully. And there was nothing I could do about it. Crying, she got back into her car and left and I re-entered the house where the older daughter stood with her hands folded together like butterfly wings. She opened them and showed me a photo of a woman in India who looked like Mother Theresa.
"This my mother. She coming here soon." She said. The teenager had made us some tea and we drank it and continued our language lesson.
As is so often the case in part-time jobs like this one, I never learned the end of the story, whether the mother from India ever did come to the U.S. and what happened to the American bride abandoned by her new husband.
We all have stories to tell and apparently there are more and more places and opportunities in which to share them! If I hear any more about these storytelling events, I will be certain to let you know!
Happy Tales!
Jo Ann
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