The other day I listened as my former sister-in-law told her younger brother a story from years ago. It happened when they lived in Japan and he was a blond-haired boy. One day as the family picnicked near a river, a crowd gathered to admire and photograph him and exclaim over his beautiful hair color, which is, of course, rare in Japan.
As he posed for their pictures, he slipped and fell into the river and started to be carried away in the current, his blond head bobbing above the surface. Panicking, the sister dove in and saved him, dragged him to shore and stood him up to comfort him.
But rather than crying he broke into a broad grin and laughed. He had loved the experience, at least according to her telling of the tale.
Her story struck me as very similar to one I tell about their nephew, who is my oldest son, when he was a toddler. One rainy winter's day after parking my leaky old Volvo sedan on one of San Francisco's notoriously slanted streets, I got out and went around to open the back door and lift my son out of his carseat.
But the precocious young fellow had already unbuckled his restraint and quick as a flash he simply slipped out of the open door into the space between the car and the curb under a small but raging river of rainwater coursing down the hill.
I freaked but was able to grab him before he was swept away by that filthy water. As I lifted him up, he broke into a hysterical laugh. He had loved every minute of it, at least according to how I tell the story.
As I read through other people's memoirs and teach memoir-writing myself, the nature of these simple family stories is a constant source of amazement to me. When the writers cover a broad swath of their family history, I notice a pattern whereby similar stories tend to repeat themselves generation to generation. It makes me wonder why we select the stories we want to remember from the (literally) millions of choices we have about each other.
Consistent with the two stories cited above, but with an added twist, one of my granddaughters, who is now ten, recently told me her own getting-all-wet story. "It was raining really hard outside one night, Grandpa. So I took off my shoes and ran up and down our block getting completely soaked head to toe. I was screaming with joy because I loved it!"
Clearly, our family lore places some sort of value on our kids enjoying getting wet in ways that others might find uncomfortable. Why these stories? I have no idea.
It is my theory that families have passed on oral traditions like these down through the millennia and that the stories they choose emphasize characteristics they wish to propagate among their progeny.
If I am right, maybe my children's great-great-great-grandfather told a similar story about one of his siblings or kids two hundred years before ours. For all we know, these types of tales may date from thousands of years ago.
Many other things happen to us beyond what is reflected in these particular stories, of course, some of which no doubt contradict the paradigm constructed by the story-tellers. But family myths retain a certain power that few other literary devices can rival.
That brings me to what may prove to be an important point. As an elder, I frequently get asked to tell stories from my own past, including in written form through a service my daughter enrolled me in called StoryWorth. Every week, the service prompts me to recall something specific, such as this week's "What do you admire most about your mother?"
Without answering that one here, it is an opportunity for me to peel back the past in layers, with bite-sized slices of my family history.
I've been forced to answer questions about my parents, my siblings, my schools, my vacations, my favorite books and movies not by repeating the usual suspect tales but by digging deeper. One question hovers over everything; Why?
Each chapter is numbered and collated into what eventually will be a book.
The process is helpful. By concentrating on one specific aspect of memory at a time, I don't get overwhelmed or retreat into the familiar. Perhaps that helps to elicit stories that I might otherwise never be likely to tell.
This experience amounts to a kind of neurosurgery on my memory, which is twisted and under the influence of the story-tellers who shaped it long before I entered the stage. Thus, it might just work.
***
THE HEADLINES:
* Private Israeli spyware used against activists and journalists -- THE PEGASUS PROJECT, A global investigation (WP)
* As the Press Weakens, So Does Democracy -- We are moving ever closer to a country where the corrupt can deal in the darkness with less fear of being exposed. (Charles M. Blow/NYT)
* Attorney General Restricts Pursuit of Reporters' Records in Leak Probes -- Merrick Garland’s order follows disclosures that the Justice Department secretly sought records of Washington Post reporters and other news outlets. (WSJ)
* How Washington power brokers gained from NSO’s spyware ambitions -- The Israeli surveillance giant NSO Group failed to build a big business in the U.S. But an influential network of consultants, lawyers and lobbyists, including from the Trump and Biden administrations, still earned money from the company along the way. (WP)
* U.S. and allies accuse China of global hacking spree (Reuters)
* 2020 presidential polls suffered worst performance in decades, report says -- A polling industry task force cited problems and possible reasons for the “unusual magnitude” of error, but it stopped short of definitive conclusions on how to fix what went wrong. (WP)
* BOOTLEG FIRE GROWS TO SIZE OF LOS ANGELES The largest wildfire in the U.S. torched more dry forest landscape in Oregon, with erratic winds creating dangerous conditions for firefighters. Authorities expanded evacuations that now affect some 2,000 residents of a largely rural area of lakes and wildlife refuges. [HuffPost]
* As Frozen Land Burns, Siberia Fears: ‘If We Don’t Have the Forest, We Don’t Have Life’ -- Northeastern Siberia is a place where people take Arctic temperatures in stride. But 100-degree days are another matter entirely. (NYT)
* National park crowds across the West are braving intense heat and hazy skies (WP)
* Pacific Gas & Electric equipment may have been involved in the start of the big Dixie Fire burning in the Sierra Nevada, the nation's largest utility reported to California regulators. (AP)
* Hot, gusty winds fanning flames of massive U.S. wildfires (Reuters)
* It’s the summer of cascading climate disasters in the U.S., with a mounting death toll and incalculable trauma. But, for the first time in over a decade, the U.S. government may actually do something about the emissions destabilizing the climate. [HuffPost]
* Scorched, Parched and Now Uninsurable: Climate Change Hits Wine Country -- Sunscreen on grapes. Toilet water that is treated and used for irrigation. Napa Valley winemakers are taking extreme steps in the face of climate change. (NYT)
* Dr. Scott Gottlieb, the former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, predicted that "most" unvaccinated Americans who haven't already had COVID-19 will contract the delta variant -- and it will be the "most serious" virus of their lives. [HuffPost]
* The Pandemic Has a New Epicenter: Indonesia -- The suffering that ravaged places like India and Brazil — with deaths soaring, hospitals overwhelmed and oxygen running out — has reached Southeast Asia. (NYT)
* Resurgent pandemic worries are knocking stocks lower from Wall Street to Sydney on Monday, fueled by fears that faster-spreading variants of the virus may upend the economy’s strong recovery. (AP)
* Dow slides more than 850 points as delta variant fears spark global sell-off (WP)
* American Academy of Pediatrics recommends universal masking in schools for everyone older than 2 (CNN)
* China reports its first death of a human from rare Monkey B virus (WP)
* Born of a Crisis, Remote Voting in Congress Has Become a Useful Perk -- An emergency measure intended to allow Congress to function amid a nationwide lockdown has become a matter of personal and political convenience for House members of both parties. (NYT)
* Surgeon General Vivek Murthy said he doesn’t believe there is “value” in people being incarcerated for marijuana use, with his opinion coming as Democratic lawmakers propose decriminalizing it at the federal level. The proposed legislation faces an uphill battle in the divided Senate. [HuffPost]
* A series of attacks on older Asian men and women have shocked San Francisco, a city with one of the largest Asian American populations in the U.S. (California Today)
* Massive and mysterious, a 100-pound fish washed ashore. Scientists hope to learn its secrets. (WP)
* ‘Nobody Believed Me’: How Rape Cases Get Dropped -- While the Me Too movement led to greater awareness about the prevalence of rape, prosecutors in New York City still struggle to prove sexual assault accusations. (NYT)
* Travel Mug Regales Other Mugs With Stories From Road (The Onion)
***
"I Love the Rain"
She comes again
I'll go and walk with her
Along the Seine
Soon she'll be storming
Here comes the wind
But that don't bother me
'Cause she's my friend
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