Yesterday was my dad’s 75th birthday and the Bergs are actually going to manage to converge in Madison for a celebration – although it will be a little more than a month from now. But when you’re as scattered hither and yon as we are, not too mention so busy and disorganized, just getting together at all is a major accomplishment. During or around that celebration, I will wax philosophically about my father, what kind of father he has been, and why I love him so much. Today, though, I’ll just say a word about my dad’s passion for story-telling and his tendency for “hostage taking.” 🙂
Have you experienced this? I’m sure you have if you know him well – and perhaps you have even if you don’t. You can be having an innocent conversation about something – almost anything – and my dad will manage to find some connection to some Bulgarian folk tale he knows or has told or hopes to tell . . .and he will start out telling you about the story, and before you know it, he is telling you THE ENTIRE STORY, start to finish, all seven minutes of it. (Or longer.) It’s not so bad when you’re comfortably seated, but he will strike whenever he likes, even if you’re standing in line at Old Country Buffet with your mashed potatoes getting cold.
This used to drive me CRAZY – – – – and I mean About-To-Go-Postal CRAZY – – – – but I have come to appreciate that this tendency for blitzkrieg storytelling stems out of nothing more than love. My dad loves stories the way dogs love Alpo – and he derives tremendous joy from sharing those stories with others. And when he’s sharing them with people he loves, it seems to be a double decker delight for him. And I have come to enjoy these storytimes with him on two concurrent levels. First, he really does know a lot of wonderful stories, and certainly tells them well . . . and secondly, it’s fun just to be half of a transaction which gives him such pleasure. For me it’s a lot like listening to a wonderful jazz musician; jazz itself is not my favorite thing, but I often enjoy watching jazz musicians enjoy themselves. And similarly, I enjoy these exchanges in part because my dad enjoys them so thoroughly.
Which is not to say that I wouldn’t tweak his timing a bit if such a thing were possible – if for no other reason than because I can imagine dad and Sonja in the middle of Lake Michigan on a sinking boat, with Sonja frantically bailing water while my dad says “this brings to a mind a wonderful Hebrew folk tale about why water is wet . . .” To everything there is a season. A time to reap and a time to sow. A time to tell stories and a time to bail water.
But honestly, I wouldn’t change this about my dad- – – it is one of the many things I love about him. And someday it will be something I really really miss.