into being in the world.
In both the traditions I come from, Mexican-Spanish by birth and immigrant Hungarian by adoption, the telling of story is considered an essential spiritual practice. Tales, legends, myths and folklore are learned, developed, numbered and preserved the way a pharmacopoeia is kept. A collection of cultural stories, and especially family stories, is considered as necessary for long and strong life as decent food, decent relationship and decent work. The life of a keeper of stories is a com-
bination of researcher, healer, linguist in symbolic language, teller of stories, inspiratrice, God talker and time traveler.
In the apothecary of the hundreds of stories I was taught by both my families, most are not used as simple entertainment. In the folkloric application, rather, they are conceived of and handled as a large group of healing medicines, each requiring spiritual preparation and certain insights by the healer as well as by the subject. These medicinal stories are traditionally used in many different ways; to teach, correct errors, lighten, assist transformation, heal wounds, re-create memory. Their main purpose is to educate and enrich soul and worldly life.
It must be noted also that many of the most powerful medicines, that is stories, come about as a result of one person's or group's terrible and compelling suffering. For the truth is that much of story comes from travail; theirs, ours, mine, yours, someone's we know, someone's we do not know far away in time and place. And yet, para-
doxically, these very stories that rise from deep suffering can provide the most potent remedies for past, present and even future ills.
When I was a child, the few Hungarian family members who survived the devastating war in Europe found their way to America with help from those already here. Suddenly, I was the fortunate inheritor of additional extended family that included several remarkable old women. One in particular I called "Auntie Irena," which in Hungarian is an affectionate name for a storyteller, like the name "Mother Goose" in Britain and the United States. It was she who gave me a story about what "enough" really means.
She was then an old woman who became one of the treasures of my life for she was filled with an immense love for humans, and most especially for little children. Sometimes she awakened me in the mornings by shaking sprinkles of cold water on my face, and this she called her special blessing on me.
She rouged my cheeks with black cherry juice in the summertime. And once in the wintertime, and outside the bounds of propriety among adults in those times, she sledded with me down a hill and into a pasture, cackling all the way. Best of all, she knew innumerable stories. When I climbed into her lap, I felt I was sitting in a great warm throne, and all seemed right with us and with the world.
This was all the more extraordinary since she and this entire branch of the family had lived through years of unspeakable fear and inhumanity during the war. They were simple farm folk who lived in the tiny hamlets and remote villages. And like millions upon millions of kinsmen and kinswomen in countries throughout Europe, all were thrust into a war they did not make, yet were forced to endure or die. Auntie, like all who survived, repeated over and over again, "I cannot hear to speak of these things. No one can understand how terrible it was. No one can understand what it was like unless they saw it, smelled it, heard it, clung to life through it themselves." When I asked what
little present she would like for her birthday or for a holiday, her reply was always the same, "No gift please, edes kis , my sweet little one. The gifts I longed for are here now—to be able to hold a child again, to be able to feel love, to be able to laugh sometimes, and to finally be able, once more, to cry. All I have yearned for is here."
Here is the story she gave to me about "enough". She told the story in the
In both the traditions I come from, Mexican-Spanish by birth and immigrant Hungarian by adoption, the telling of story is considered an essential spiritual practice. Tales, legends, myths and folklore are learned, developed, numbered and preserved the way a pharmacopoeia is kept. A collection of cultural stories, and especially family stories, is considered as necessary for long and strong life as decent food, decent relationship and decent work. The life of a keeper of stories is a com-
bination of researcher, healer, linguist in symbolic language, teller of stories, inspiratrice, God talker and time traveler.
In the apothecary of the hundreds of stories I was taught by both my families, most are not used as simple entertainment. In the folkloric application, rather, they are conceived of and handled as a large group of healing medicines, each requiring spiritual preparation and certain insights by the healer as well as by the subject. These medicinal stories are traditionally used in many different ways; to teach, correct errors, lighten, assist transformation, heal wounds, re-create memory. Their main purpose is to educate and enrich soul and worldly life.
It must be noted also that many of the most powerful medicines, that is stories, come about as a result of one person's or group's terrible and compelling suffering. For the truth is that much of story comes from travail; theirs, ours, mine, yours, someone's we know, someone's we do not know far away in time and place. And yet, para-
doxically, these very stories that rise from deep suffering can provide the most potent remedies for past, present and even future ills.
When I was a child, the few Hungarian family members who survived the devastating war in Europe found their way to America with help from those already here. Suddenly, I was the fortunate inheritor of additional extended family that included several remarkable old women. One in particular I called "Auntie Irena," which in Hungarian is an affectionate name for a storyteller, like the name "Mother Goose" in Britain and the United States. It was she who gave me a story about what "enough" really means.
She was then an old woman who became one of the treasures of my life for she was filled with an immense love for humans, and most especially for little children. Sometimes she awakened me in the mornings by shaking sprinkles of cold water on my face, and this she called her special blessing on me.
She rouged my cheeks with black cherry juice in the summertime. And once in the wintertime, and outside the bounds of propriety among adults in those times, she sledded with me down a hill and into a pasture, cackling all the way. Best of all, she knew innumerable stories. When I climbed into her lap, I felt I was sitting in a great warm throne, and all seemed right with us and with the world.
This was all the more extraordinary since she and this entire branch of the family had lived through years of unspeakable fear and inhumanity during the war. They were simple farm folk who lived in the tiny hamlets and remote villages. And like millions upon millions of kinsmen and kinswomen in countries throughout Europe, all were thrust into a war they did not make, yet were forced to endure or die. Auntie, like all who survived, repeated over and over again, "I cannot hear to speak of these things. No one can understand how terrible it was. No one can understand what it was like unless they saw it, smelled it, heard it, clung to life through it themselves." When I asked what
little present she would like for her birthday or for a holiday, her reply was always the same, "No gift please, edes kis , my sweet little one. The gifts I longed for are here now—to be able to hold a child again, to be able to feel love, to be able to laugh sometimes, and to finally be able, once more, to cry. All I have yearned for is here."
Here is the story she gave to me about "enough". She told the story in the
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