Here’s
something that can bring on the awe: storytelling.
You know when there’s a
really good storyteller, and suddenly previously blah stories have power and
meaning and connection? Or when you’re just wandering around thinking of
nothing and you hear a good story and it captures you and changes your perspective?
Something like that
happened at the Reading Series last semester when Brian Doyle came:
(I
would suggest starting around 9 minutes and really tuning in around 10:30 for a
bit until 14:30ish to hear a good story.)
And
it’s like, even if you’re not really feeling the awe, like I didn’t really as I
relistened to this thing that impacted me
differently last November, at least it’s a good story. Even when I was there in the moment hearing this, I wasn't really swept away, but I was kind of in awe of him and his passion and stories.
He
reads this one I’ve posted below at around 32 minutes. I think it’s better when
you read it to yourself.
Dawn
And Mary
Brian
Doyle
Early
one morning several teachers and staffers at a Connecticut grade school were in
a meeting. The meeting had been underway for about five minutes when they heard
a chilling sound in the hallway. (We heard pop-pop-pop, said one of the
staffers later.)
Most
of them dove under the table. That is the reasonable thing to do, what they
were trained to do, and that is what they did.
But
two of the staffers jumped, or leapt, or lunged out of their chairs and ran
toward the sound of bullets. Which word you use depends on which news account
of that morning you read, but the words all point in the same direction —
toward the bullets.
One
of the staffers was the principal. Her name was Dawn. She had two daughters.
Her husband had proposed to her five times before she’d finally said yes, and
they had been married for ten years. They had a vacation house on a lake. She
liked to get down on her knees to paint with the littlest kids in her school.
The
other staffer was a school psychologist named Mary. She had two daughters. She
was a football fan. She had been married for more than thirty years. She and
her husband had a cabin on a lake. She loved to go to the theater. She was due
to retire in one year. She liked to get down on her knees to work in her
garden.
Dawn
the principal told the teachers and the staffers to lock the door behind them,
and the teachers and the staffers did so after Dawn and Mary ran out into the
hall.
You
and I have been in that hallway. We spent seven years of our childhood in that
hallway. It’s friendly and echoing, and when someone opens the doors at the
end, a wind comes and flutters all the paintings and posters on the walls.
Dawn
and Mary jumped, or leapt, or lunged toward the sound of bullets. Every fiber
of their bodies — bodies descended from millions of years of bodies that had
leapt away from danger — must have wanted to dive under the table. That’s what
they’d been trained to do. That’s how you live to see another day. That’s how
you stay alive to paint with the littlest kids and work in the garden and hug
your daughters and drive off laughing to your cabin on the lake.
But
they leapt for the door, and Dawn said, Lock the door after us, and they lunged
right at the boy with the rifle.
The
next time someone says the word hero to you, you say this: There once were two
women. One was named Dawn, and the other was named Mary. They both had two
daughters. They both loved to kneel down to care for small beings. They leapt
from their chairs and ran right at the boy with the rifle, and if we ever
forget their names, if we ever forget the wind in that hallway, if we ever
forget what they did, if we ever forget that there is something in us beyond
sense and reason that snarls at death and runs roaring at it to defend
children, if we ever forget that all children are our children, then we are
fools who have allowed memory to be murdered too, and what good are we then?
What good are we then?
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