Liz Warren | Storyteller

Since my brother Dean passed away in 2004, my eight remaining siblings and I get together annually. Without spouses. Without kids. Without an agenda, except to be with each other, to share stories and memories, to savor a special dinner prepared just for the weekend.  In November, however, my sister Ellen added another tradition: bringing all five sisters together for a weekend without the boys. She and her husband had just moved into a beautiful home nestled at the foot of the Catalina Mountains in Tucson, and it had enough room for all of us to stay. She hired one of Tucson’s star chefs to prepare a special dinner and assigned us all a role: Patti, the organized one, prepared the silly game. Barbara, the poet, shared a poetic remembrance; I insisted on telling a story; Betsy, the remaining Catholic, gave the blessings, and so it went.  We all had listened to the recent NPR broadcast on the Story Corps project, encouraging teens to ask their elders to share stories over the Thanksgiving holidays. So we spent some time looking at the questions we liked, and on our last day together, went around the table sharing stories to these prompts:

1. Who has been the biggest influence on your life? What lessons did that person teach you?
2. Who has been the kindest to you in your life?
3. If you could hold on to one memory from your life forever, what would that be? How has your life been different than what you’d imagined?
4. For your great-great grandchildren listening to this years from now: is there any wisdom you’d want to pass on to them? What would you want them to know?

We like to think we know each other’s stories inside and out, after all we grew up within a year of each other, in the same big sprawling house, with the same parents, with the same relatives and friends. How different could our memories be?

Different.

I heard about the neighbor, Mrs. Watson, who taught my sister Patti how to sew everything. From my sister Ellen, I heard about her first grade teacher Mrs. Devine, who inspired Ellen to become a teacher. And Kathy! Dad took her to the ballet when she was 12! What! Where was I! Kathy and I were inseparable. Barbara talked about our grandfather Dada, and how she cuddled with him at night. Betsy talked about the McCarthys’, who helped her with so many small to large things.

But most important, what we learned was that each of us had someone, many someones, who had been kind, loving, forgiving towards us. What we learned, listening to each other, was the power of kindness, and how a single act of kindness can be transformational. My sister Ellen’s teacher, Mrs. Devine, died shortly after Ellen completed the first grade with her; after the third grade, I never once saw the Sister Ethelrita, who taught me arithmetic day after day, after school, and helped me pass; and so it went. These people changed our lives, but their presence was transitional. Kindness isn’t. It’s transformational. As we said our good-byes that weekend, we said, once more, what we were most grateful for. Yes, it was the loving-kindness that each of us felt for the other, and the commitment to this legacy, from children to great-great-great-grandchildren. And to strangers. And friends. And oh yes, even to our foes.