Even though I was born and raised in Arizona, I have spent the majority of my life in the Appalachian region of Western North Carolina. The mountains are definitely my home now. The desert’s beauty is unique and pretty incredible, but nothing takes my breath away like a beautiful morning in the Smokey Mountains — especially on a pretty Fall morning.
Ten years ago I was working as a Therapeutic Case Manager in children’s mental health. I covered some of the most impoverished counties in North Carolina. Well, they were impoverished according to demographics, but I don’t think that many of the residents of these counties necessarily felt like they were poor. If you own a small piece of land (usually inherited), a home, and you can farm your land, what else could you possible need? This was the view of a lot of the Mountain folks. I worked with some of the children in these counties who had come to the attention of the authorities for one reason or the other. I also conducted some qualitative research for a volunteer based “911 enhancement” program. Both of these jobs essentially put me right in the middle of Appalachian Culture. It was a fast and furious baptism by fire to say the least.
One thing I found, however, that would often win the hearts of the people I needed to work cooperatively with was to just sit with them and let them tell me their stories. Storytelling is a huge part of the vernacular tradition in Appalachia. It happens spontaneously. One time I asked for directions from a local tobacco farmer, and with each landmark he pointed me to, there was a story to be told. “Just drive down that road a bit, and when you come to that old barn where the roof is falling in, turn left.” The farmer went on to tell me why the barn was in disrepair, and the tragic story of a farming family and the cancer that ended their livelihood. Storytelling to the folks in Appalachia is a lot like giving directions to a specific destination. Their stories are their landmarks. Listening is the only way to get from point A to point B.
I don’t think that I realized until recently how much of this storytelling had stayed with me. I haven’t worked in that culture for many years now, but sometimes the stories I heard still pop in my mind when a particular issue arises. The beauty of a culture having a vernacular tradition is that tid-bits of wisdom get added as the wise silver headed residents tell the story. It is a far cry from the post-modern scurry of today. It seems that we very rarely stop to hear a particular story behind a morsel of wisdom that someone wants to share with us. We would rather have the problem’s solution and resolution pre-digested for us. We don’t have time for stories. We are a culture on the move! Sometimes I think that in all of our busyness we lose something valuable and important. We lose our need for each other, and we lose our interest in one another.
I had a nice scholarship in undergrad, but one aspect of that scholarship was many hours of community service work. I was a social work major, so this fit well with what would be expected of me in my given major anyway. One year I picked the local Hospice program in which to fulfill this requirement. I was assigned a very frail, tiny, wisp-of a woman who had been bed ridden for years. She technically should not have been on the Hospice list any more, but the director didn’t want to remove her from the roster because she would lose some extra services without her Hospice designation. The little lady (I will call her “Mrs. B”) was nearly blind and could barely hold her head up. She was in her upper 70’s, and had lived a great deal indeed. I did not know when I walked into her room that she would touch my heart to the degree that she did. We became fast friends.
Mrs. B had a great love for American Literature. I had an Anthology of American Lit, so I would crack open the pages and read. With each paragraph I read she would slowly, and breathlessly, tell me a story about her life. Mrs. B. was a WWII concentration camp survivor. She was only a young girl when she entered. She left the camp an orphan and separated from her siblings (it wasn’t until later that she discovered a living sister). As she gasped for breath to tell me her story I was gasping for breath to hold back the tears. Here she was, this strong survivor holding these incredible stories inside. She spent day after day looking out her window in that bed; a lonely and lovely lady. It was a kinder and softer prison, but a prison nonetheless. We met pretty regularly until she became very ill with pneumonia. She survived the concentration camp, but time, age and illness ended her life.
I still think about her from time to time. I can still see her frail silhouette in the bed, and I can hear her raspy and wheezing voice quietly humming out the tune of her life. This encounter really drove home for me the importance of listening. I could have just whisked into her room each day, fluffed her pillow and filled her water glass, but I was blessed to be able to sit and read stories to her, and listen to her own stories being told back to me. Had I not taken the time we both would have been robbed greatly. I, however, would have been the one to lose the most.
Tags: Art, Things I love, faith, family life by Claire
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