I grew up on stories, but they weren't the stories you would expect. Rather than fairytales, my mom told me folktales, but not those folktales. She told me about my folks: the Cowans family who founded Cowansville, PA. She told me about Grandma Jessie, who loved little girls but not big ones and tended to trade for a younger model when her current one got old and boring (Mom never used those exact words, but her stories were pretty telling). I'm just grateful my mom spent her formidable years being loved and doted on by Grandma Jessie, though it's probably in poor taste to say I'm glad Grandma Jessie passed before my mom was too old to be boring.
I heard stories about my direct grandparents too, like how Meemaw won a beauty pageant as a teen and Peepaw set an apartment building on fire around the same time. I heard about the time Meemaw's brother, my Uncle Bobby, led the police on a citywide chase before ditching his motorcycle at a body shop for a paint job and making a clean getaway. I know about Uncle George's store and Aunt Rose's front porch and how summers in Cowansville were so idyllic, it's a wonder my mom still has all her teeth for all the country-living sweetness.
But the stories I liked best were the stories about my parents. About my mom who was into bad boys in leather coats who rode motorcycles and about my dad who had long hair, a leather jacket, and that perfect motorcycle but was as far from a bad boy as one could possibly get without being canonized as a Saint. He'd deny it to his last breath, but Mom still swears by it. She's probably blinded by love, but I don't mind.
I can't remember the first time I heard the story about how they climbed a mountain for their first date to watch the sun come up. Or how my dad leaned over to kiss my mom just as the sky blushed pink and she said, "It's about time." I like to retell the story of how I got my name because it says a lot about my parents, what they value, and how they problem-solve. I'm sure I'll tell it here sometime, but that's a post for another day.
Even now, at 36-years-old, my mom still tells me folktales. Some I've heard a thousand times, and some are startlingly knew. I know pretty much all there is to know about my mom from her ex-boyfriends to that time she was tempted to cheat on my dad "just because I could." She never did, but that story reminded me in a real way that no one is perfect. Not even my mom. In her own words: "We're all slobs on the bus just trying to get by."
Briefly touched on as they are, these stories were, and still are, a form of magic. They're magic because of the bond they created between my mom and me, and the strength they infused in me as a child. They're magic because they gave me a foundation of truth on which to build a castles in the air.
I don't know if my mom saw her storytelling as something profound. For her, they were probably just memories she wanted to share. But for me? They were the link binding me more and more tightly to my family, to my parents, to my history. The stories of my folks are my stories too. And I'll carry them with me for the rest of my life.
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