Written by Jasmine Banks of The Brokins
My grandma used to sit on her covered front porch and smoke Black & Mild cigarillos and drink Crown Royal. Her love for Canadian whiskey was only slightly overshadowed by her love of story telling. She would sit in an old metal chair with a vinyl cushion with her right leg crossed over the the left at the ankles. Her legs were shiny with oil and sweat, this Black woman never forgot to rub herself down with almond oil a day in her life. She always donned a house dress. The house dress was always of the Kmart variety. The lapel of her dress, as I vividly remember it, was a purple quilted pattern that was worn from years of use. The front of the dress had huge pockets where she kept her lighter and cigarillos and whatever other flotsam that was required to be on her person. I would sit next to her as she lit her cigar and told stories. She’d pause here and there to slowly sip her whisky and just stare off into space, as if she was replaying the events in her memories before releasing them into the air. She would open her mouth to speak and the words would whip around the air like a smooth riff from a Coltrane song mixed with salt and grit. She was a poet to me. She was a poet, and artist, and a sage. She was, and is, my Grandma Annie Pearl. Not Grandma Annie, Grandma Pearl, or Grandma! The full “Grandma Annie Pearl” is required to fully incapsulate the haughty and noble woman, though I dare say you cannot bottle her kind. Her kind are the kind that we remember when we taste food, when we smell a certain smell, or when we remember what plastic on the couch feels like. That clingy slippery feeling that made your lower back sweat and created the continual slide forward off the couch is an annoying experience that when coupled with Grandma Annie Pearl becomes a sweet wistful memory and a smile. Her kind are the kind that we remember when they are gone. They are more than loved ones who left us or we might fondly recal, no they are identity markers. We have drank them into ourselves. We have consumed the stories that continue to nourish our very souls even after the words can no longer be spoken.
The power to write, to blog, to journal, and to reflect are the sacred powers to create worlds. We build worlds and identities on the internet while our predecessors built worlds while sipping whisky on the front porch, around a campfire, or while driving in that one old rickety truck you remember. My Grandma Annie Pearl told her stories in such a way that I yearned to live in the moment she described. I wanted to BE there when “so and so had her baby and sure as day that baby came out white. Ain’t nobody in that room say a word, till the midwife say, his color will come in! E’rybody exhaled and started laughin’ cuz didn’t nobody want to say that child was white first!” Saying you are a blogger can easily be a way to excuse yourself from responsibility, “I am a blogger! NOT a writer!” The truth is: bloggers and writers are both storytellers.
Maybe I am just a romantic? Maybe it is the nostalgia of being raised by such a dynamic storyteller? Either way, I want to challenge you in this
Live a life that is worth being told stories about. As I said at the Arkansas Women Blogger’s Conference: In order to have a life well said, you must experience a life well lived. This requires unplugging from the phone and laptop, getting your hands dirty, and experiencing your world. It means building relationships worth talking about. It means figuring out why that one thing bothers you so deeply. The power of a story is, at its most fundamental level, about the power of reflection. Lets get back to living good lives, telling good stories, and building worlds with our worlds that people want to live in because we’ve lived in them first.
