by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
For the last several months, I’ve been obsessively researching fairy tales, myths, and stories. I’ve started at the beginning—traced the stories all the way back to the oral tradition, before scribes wrote them down. And what I’ve found has been profound.
Again and again and again I am reminded of this: Stories are so incredibly important.
During the days of oral storytelling, bards recorded history, politics, religion, societal shifts, and all sorts of important nuances within their spoken words. People would eagerly gather around fires or tables or small circular patches of land to hear some of the most respected people, besides kings and queens, tell the stories of where they all came from, what made them who they are, how they could avoid the pitfalls of the past. Bards gave voice to vital lessons learned, warnings, mistakes and the subsequent consequences of those mistakes. They recorded life so that better life could be lived.
This is the gift of history.
We may not be a society that is strictly dependent on the oral tradition anymore, but books, specifically, hold important keys to the past. In one year, I will have a book publish in the traditional world that holds up a magnifying glass to the surprising desegregation battle in Houston, Texas, specifically in the Houston School District. They were late to the equal rights party, didn’t desegregate until the federal government stepped in and said they had to. Some white parents in the district even went so far as to attempt beginning their own school district intended for only white children, an attempt that was shot down in court.
You won’t find this information in the history books. In fact, I have on my bookshelf a book that details the history of the city of Houston, and not anywhere in this book is it mentioned that this was the reality for the Houston School District in 1971 and 1972. I had to scour legal documents to even find the information I was looking for. It happened. We forgot.
Sometimes we also forget, in light of shady pasts, that it’s important to tell our stories. This story needs telling. It shows us who we have been so that we can choose to be someone better. It shows us the mistakes of the past so that we can avoid their pitfalls in the future.
This is the power of stories. And it is precisely what the bards of the past were doing in their oral tradition. They were recording so that we would remember, so that mankind could become what it is today, so that we would learn and grow and take heed of it all and write a better story. In myths and legends, people died for foolish mistakes, for misunderstandings, for passionate pursuits that missed the mark. People continue to die today. So we, as a people, as human beings, as a love community in action, continue pressing forward for a better world.
We do this by telling our stories. We do it by telling the stories of others. We do it by remembering the past in its (sometimes less-than-stellar) entirety.
Every now and then my husband and I linger a little longer with our children, over a dinner that has long been consumed, and we tell stories about when Mama and Daddy were younger. I tell about my occasional rebellions, my relationship with my father, the time a rattlesnake camped out on our front porch and we were stuck inside the house until my mother took my father’s shotgun and blew snake brains all over the screen door.
My kids love these stories. They ask for them again and again and again. They are the myths and legends and fairy tales of our family. They show us who we have been and who we can choose to be now.
Keep your stories alive.
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by Rachel Toalson | Crash Test Parents, Wing Chair Musings featured
In a house like mine, there are many, many talkers—especially during the summer. I estimate that before the clock strikes 7 a.m., I’ve already heard an average of five trillion words, which typically run in one ear and out the other.
My boys have quite distinctive personalities when it comes to talk. We have Motor Mouth.
This is the kid who never stops talking. He will plant himself right next to your elbow and follow you around as you’re doing the dirty dishes and putting the clean ones away. You’ll have to reach over his head (if he’s not taller than you yet) to get a cup out for his brother, reach around him to throw something away, and reach under him to tie the shoe of his brother so you can get on the road to school, a walk that will contain a billion more words from Motor Mouth while he finishes what he was saying—which he never actually does.
I will regularly trip over this kid as he follows me around talking about his dreams, his plans for today’s stop motion movies, plus the next week’s stop motion movies, and, also, the stop motion movies he’ll make when he’s all the way grown.
He, unlike me, never misses a beat.
We also have The Sloth Speaker.
This is the kid who takes incredibly long to tell a story. He has so many words and stories inside his head that he will often forget what he’s saying in the middle of saying it and either start something new or just look blankly at the wall for a while until he says, “I forgot what I was saying.” He will also interject “um” quite often and will unabashedly prove that he didn’t really consider what he wanted to say before he opened his mouth.
A sentence like, “We did jump ropes in P.E. today” will take him at least five minutes to get out—not only because he will use all kinds of extraneous words but also because of all the excruciating pauses where he has to gather what he wants to say. There are just too many words flitting about in this boy’s brain.
Then there’s The Broken Record.
You can probably imagine that there are many interruptions in our house. The Broken Record is the kid who will start over completely when he’s interrupted—even if he was almost finished with his original story. We live in fear that someone will interrupt him when he’s 12,000 words in and he’ll start over from scratch.
Next we have Mr. Know-It-All.
This honor belongs to one of my 4-year-olds, because of course he’s been around long enough to know everything about the world, and then some. He will speak matter-of-factly on every subject imaginable, even if it’s to say something like this: “One of these days I’ll be older than you.” That’s not possible, son. But I can’t tell him this. He knows everything, and no one can convince him otherwise, even if they’ve been around longer and have done more research on whatever he’s claiming to know about.
Then there’s the delightful Random Man.
Random Man is the other 4-year-old in my house. He offers all sorts of random information in random places. If one were to say that it’s time to clean up, he would say that did you know his brother went over to Logan’s house yesterday? If you tell him we’re going to read a story, he will tell you that he’s not wearing any underwear today. If you tell him thank you for the flower he just gave you, he will tell you that he threw up last night (it was actually three weeks ago, concerned kindergarten teacher.)
His teacher is going to have so much fun next year with Random Man in her class.
The last boy in my house is affectionally called The Sage.
This is the kid who often seems random but is, instead, profound. Sometimes what he says is so profound that we can’t even understand him. It could be because he’s only 2, but I like to think it’s because he has a lot of wise words to say. Everyone gets quiet when he speaks, too—they all know he has something significant to say.
The other day I was cooking dinner, and Motor Mouth came up to tell me about the stop motion video he’d recorded. Sloth Speaker tapped me on the shoulder, and, while Motor Mouth was still in the middle of his never-ending story, said, “I…uh…I…I uh…I was…uh…running around outside and I…uh…fell down and I uh….scraped…I uh….scraped…” He looked lost for a minute and then said, “I scraped my elbow” and held up a bleeding elbow.
“Oh my gosh,” I said. “Let’s get that taken care of.”
I tripped over Motor Mouth on my way to the bathroom, where Broken Record came in and said, “I saw…I saw the…I saw the whole…I saw the whole thing…I saw the whole thing and…I saw the whole thing and it…I saw the whole thing and it looked…I saw the whole thing and it looked like it hurt.”
Know-It-All came in and said, “He’s going to bleed to death. That’s too much blood.” Sloth Speaker started freaking out, so I took matters into my own hands.
“You’re 4,” I said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m wearing three pairs of underwear and four socks on each foot,” said Random Man.
“You’re wearing twenty socks?” said Know-It-All.
“Spider!” said The Sage. He pointed. The room stilled and then exploded. We did what we always do when we see spiders—we ran away screaming.
Well, most of us ran away screaming—all except for Motor Mouth, who ran away still talking.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
The other night I was passing through the hallway between our home library and my bedroom when I saw my youngest, who is 2, running through his own hallway. His hair, which is on the long side, rippled behind him, and he was flapping his arms as he ran, laughing about how it felt to have wings.
I waved my husband to my side and whispered, “Look how adorable he is.”
We’d already put him to bed, but there he was, darting back and forth, laughing hysterically, flapping his wings, unaware that we were watching. He looked like he might take off and fly.
Sometimes bedtime has to wait so a little boy can learn what it feels like to fly.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
I sent off the final revisions for my novel-in-verse to my New York publisher, so that’s a weight off my shoulders (and what a surreal feeling it was!). It took a husband and seven hours to read through the novel (for the tenth and hopefully final time) and make the requested changes. I was only interrupted twelve times, which is actually pretty good. One of those times, my 2-year-old brought me his daily flower offering. I save them all in a bouquet of dried-up wildflowers, because, well, he’s super cute.
Another of the interruptions was one of the 5-year-olds, who wanted to show me what happened when he left the cup with a block of ice (in which a car was suspended) out in the 100-degree heat. That’s right. The water melted.
And the best interruption was, again, my 2-year-old, who wanted to join me writing. He used my grandmother’s old Remington typewriter.
In other news, I have a brand new poetry book coming out in October (called Life: a definition of terms), written entirely in haiku poetry, which means it will be easy to read and slightly short, indicative of my attention span this summer with all the kids home driving me up one wall and down the other. Despite the short nature of the poems, this book took me a year to write and compile, so rest assured: it will contain my customary humor, spirit, and declarations to be who you are—and be it proud.
And, lastly, summer is wrapping up—which means in another few weeks I’ll be able to get back to my customary schedule. While I LOVE summer vacation, because it means I get to spend more time with my boys, I’m ready to be back in the writers’ chair (I don’t actually use a chair, but whatever). I hope you’ve had a wonderful summer and will wrap it up like we do: with a celebratory dinner, dessert, and a dance-off party.
If you want a more in-depth inside look at the writer life, along with excerpts from Rachel’s brand new books and unpublished poems and essays, visit her Reader Library page, where you can sign up for her monthly newsletter. You’ll also get some stories and volumes of poetry for free.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
Work has been running away with me.
This summer it’s been difficult to get anything done. I intentionally scaled back a little, said I was going to spend most of the summer working on research, which has been fun (and addictive…I don’t know if I’ll ever be done with research).
I’ve been researching pirates, madhouses, carnival architecture, the Industrial Revolution, science, legends and myths, everything about the 1930s, P.T. Barnum, witches, and the expeditions of Captain Cook. These may seem like they have nothing at all to do with each other, but that’s the best kind of research a writer can do. The greatest stories come from the intersection between seemingly unconnected ideas and things.
I tagged this summer as a research summer, because I know how hard summers are with all the kids home from school and fighting and asking for more food and tearing the house apart.
But when I don’t get a chance to write, the words start building up inside me, and I start feeling like a clogged pipe. The pressure is immense. I need an outlet.
Not to mention, notes came back from my publisher, and I needed time to make the edits. A deadline was looming.
So I started stealing moments where I could. The kids were out playing for a few minutes, and I would open my journal and start writing, and then one of them would come in to tattle on his brother, and I’d be annoyed that he was acting like a kid.
They’d be happily playing with the Legos on the floor, and I’d boot up my computer with the intention of breezing through the edits, and someone would interrupt me with a question, to which I would respond with annoyance—because he was displaying the curiosity of a kid.
They’d sit down to do their silent reading, and I’d pull out a book so I could make a little extra progress on my research, and as soon as I opened the book, someone would tap me on the shoulder, smile, and show me a page from his own book, and the look on my face would communicate my annoyance.
The other day I was cooking dinner, listening to a collection of Hans Christian Anderson’s fairy tales, and the back door kept opening so that boys could come in to tell me about the grasshopper they’d caught and the rabbit they saw and how the birds were eating the bread they left out. I kept feeling that familiar flash of annoyance every time they interrupted—because my hands were messy and I had to push pause on my audiobook. So inconvenient.
And then one time they all filed back outside and I stood there working in silence, thinking about how I hadn’t been able to stop and look at my kids for the entire day. I dropped the dishes I was washing and stepped out onto the porch. They were all crowded in the middle of the yard, by a rock they’d lifted, under which were all sorts of fascinating bugs. I watched for a while.
And this is what I noticed:
A little boy’s feet streaked with dirt
Long eyelashes splayed against a smooth cheek
A brilliant smile from the one who successfully captured a grasshopper
The studied concentration of a boy trying to poke holes in a plastic container so the grasshoppers could breathe
A Batman cape, whipping in the wind
The exuberant laughter of a boy on a trampoline
These words now live in my diary, and I jot some down every day.
Our lives are full of inspiration and illumination. They are full of beauty and encouragement. They are full of LIFE, if we can only stop long enough to see it. It’s not easy. I know. There’s so much to do, all the time. How will we ever do it all?
I’m not convinced we will. And that’s okay. The important thing is that we’re living a full life—and the only way we can do that is by stopping, looking, listening, breathing, being.
by Rachel Toalson | Wing Chair Musings
It’s been a bit of a rough summer. Money’s been tight (again), kids have been home to step all over my nerves (though they’re delightful and I love having them here—most of the time), anxiety’s been…well. Anxiety’s been anxiety.
The other day I was examining my 5-year-old’s head, because I’d noticed some flakes in his hair, which generally indicates either gastronomical distress or mental distress. While examining the dry patches, I noticed a spot that looked like a mole but was much darker than the other moles on his body—a spot that didn’t used to be there.
I should preface this by saying that I know way more about moles than the common person probably should. This is because I’m a mole-y person, and just after my second son was born (and, consequentially, after I saw an episode of Grey’s Anatomy where Katherine had a cancerous mole on her back), I went through a postpartum paranoia about all the moles on my body. This was exacerbated by a dermatologist who seemed to sense my fear and used it to drain us of a lot of insurance and out-of-pocket money. He removed eight moles on two visits—only one of which needed further treatment.
So when I saw this spot on my son’s head, I immediately freaked out. I had a full-blown panic attack in the hallway of my church, because I couldn’t keep my anxious thoughts in check. My throat closed up, my knees buckled a little, and my heart started pounding like I was in mortal danger.
This is what living with anxiety is like.
I took him and his brothers to the church nursery and immediately searched his twin brother’s head. So the nursery workers didn’t think I was looking for lice, I told them I’d found a weird spot on his twin brother and I just wanted to make sure the he didn’t have a spot, too. We got into a discussion about anxiety. One of the workers has a teenage daughter who has frequent anxiety attacks, but she herself has never had one.
And this got me wondering what it was like to live without anxiety.
My husband, Ben, is the kind of person who can notice something, file it away in the back of his mind, and carry on in his normal, unaffected way. Contrast that with me: I will notice something—a checking account that isn’t as full as it needs to be, someone looked at me the wrong way, a spot on my son’s scalp—and it will result in a sleepless night.
What would it be like to live without anxiety?
When we got home, I told Ben I wished I could be more like him. And he said, “But I like you as you are, anxiety and all.”
And it’s true. He does.
So much of the time, when we notice these “unacceptable” things about ourselves—our propensity toward pessimism or drama or anxiety or depression or manic behavior—we think it means we are less than human, less than normal, less than lovable. But we’re not. These things don’t define who we are; they’re just neuroses. We are not defined by our neuroses.
So what if the deep waters of anxiety pull me down every now and then? I am not defined by it. And, more importantly, I always get back up.
Rather than hide our quirks, we should uncover them. We never know who’s watching or listening or withering in their own way. Who knows whose life we might save by being ourselves—anxiety and all.
P.S. The doctor reports that the spot on our son’s head is just a normal skin spot. We’ll keep an eye on it, see if it changes, deal with it in time.
