TELL ME A STORY, MY FRIEND

TELL ME A STORY, MY FRIEND

My friends often asked, “Where do you get your ideas for your stories?”

I’d just tell them, “Keep on talking.”

They’d laugh, unaware that many of my ideas did, indeed, come from them. 

Make me laugh, and I promise that your amusing story will become a punchline for one of my characters. Tell me about stealing your father’s car and joy riding all night, and I guarantee my protagonist will become a middle-of-the-night car thief. Share your sadness with me, and your tears will find their way into my next story, recorded forever to show that your pain is real and that someone cares. 

My friends’ lives—the parts they’d freely share with me—touched me and kept me writing year after year.

Then Covid happened.

Gone were the three-hour lunches, bursting with conversation that led to compelling stories. Gone were the chats at the gym. Gone were hikes around the lake. Gone was church. Gone were casual drop-ins. Gone were simple exchanges at the mailbox. 

The isolation was unbearable. The lack of human contact was heartbreaking. The silence was painful. My writing thrived on the tales of friends, yet my source had dried up overnight. What was I to do?

Say what you will about social media, but that motherlode of trivia, nostalgia, and downright foolishness saved this writer’s sanity and craft. Those five hundred friends and friend-strangers stepped into my life and filled the void with laughter and joy, melancholy and grief. And it rebooted my writing career.

You may think no one really cared that you ate homemade apple bread for breakfast and reported it—with pictures—on Facebook. I cared. I cared that you were well and safe and trying desperately to maintain some normalcy in your life, even if normal only meant eating apple bread for breakfast. I cared, and I will write about it.

I was sad that your children weren’t able to go to their senior proms and their high school graduations, after a year-plus of distance learning and isolation from their friends. But I thank you for sharing pictures of them in their formals and tuxedos, their caps and gowns, looking so positive, while their parents were mired in negativity. I envy their optimism, and I will delight in writing about them.  

I cared deeply that you weren’t there to meet your first grandchild when your only child gave birth. But I was grateful that you shared videos as she grew, smiled that first smile, and rolled over by herself. I was thankful that I was there—remotely—when you facetimed with her and she called you Ga Ga for the first time. I was moved by the warmth of that moment but pained for your aloneness, so I will write about it. 

Now, as we emerge from our lengthy isolation, hopeful our vaccines will be effective, fearful of a variant creeping toward us, and unsure of the future, I embrace the prospect of gathering once again.

I’ll come to your home just as you are taking a loaf of apple bread from the oven. And you won’t have to eat it alone. You’ll give me a slice so fresh, so hot, I’ll have to blow to help it cool a bit. I’ll be delighted for both of us, so I’ll rush home and write about it.  

I’ll watch your children pack your cars with luggage and books and dorm fridges. I’ll see their joy as they head off to college, confident they will be fine…while you are not so sure. But because I care about you, my friends, I’ll capture that moment in words. 

I’ll peer through the window as your daughter brings her little girl to meet her Ga Ga for the first time. I’ll watch her toddle to you, fearless, arms outstretched, and I’ll get to see your first embrace. I will be so happy for you, dear friend. And I will write about it.

And, precious friends, we’ll gather for lunch for the first time since we heard the word pandemic. We’ll wear the same clothes we wore when we last met, but our Covid pounds will be straining the seams. Our hair will reach beyond our shoulders and will be shot through with gray. Our nails will be natural for lack of professional manicures, and we will have learned over our many months behind masks that lipstick really isn’t important.

As we climb from our cars, we’ll approach one another with caution, unsure of post-pandemic social distancing rules. 

We’ll all smile self-consciously until one of us says, “Can we hug?”

We’ll decide that we can. And we will. And, just like that, we’ll be back in our favorite restaurant, eating our favorite foods, but, more importantly, laughing with our tribe at the same silly jokes. 

One of you will say something scandalous, and the rest of us will shriek with mock surprise, making fellow diners turn to stare. But we won’t care, because we’ll have sixteen months of pent-up scandal that we must share. We’ll laugh a lot and we’ll cry a little—tears of relief, remorse, nostalgia, grief, and gratitude. 

One of you will say discreetly, “A crumb…on your lip.”

The other will swipe with her napkin and ask, “Got it?”

And you’ll just smile and nod.

The intimacy of that simple act of thoughtfulness will move me.

Then one of you will reach across the table and squeeze our friend’s hand. And you’ll both get a bit teary-eyed.

I will be so touched by the tenderness of our gathering, so touched that my heart will record ever moment. 

And once we’re able to say our reluctant good-byes, I’ll rush home and write your stories. 

I promise. 

—

Padgett Gerler was born on the coast of South Carolina and grew up in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, nestled in the picturesque Appalachian Mountains. Her husband Ed calls her childhood home Dick and Jane Country. Leaving the mountains for college, Padgett graduated from North Carolina State University with an accounting degree. After earning her CPA certificate, she practiced accounting in Raleigh, North Carolina, until, in 2010, she left her career to pursue fiction writing.

Padgett is the award-winning author of six published novels: Getting the Important Things Right (2012), Lessons I Learned from Nick Nack (2014), The Gifts of Pelican Isle (2016), What Does Love Sound Like? (2017), Invisible Girl (2019) and The Summer the Air Changed (2021). Lessons I Learned from Nick Nack and Invisible Girl were awarded the indieBRAG Medallion, while Lessons I Learned from Nick Nack also received honorable mention in the Writer’s Digest Self-published Book Awards. The Gifts of Pelican Isle was a Finalist in the 2018 Best Book Awards sponsored by American Book Fest. Padgett’s short story “The Art of Dying” won first place in the Southwest Manuscripters Awards. Her short story “I Know This Happened ’Cause Somebody Seen It” is featured in the anthology Self-Rising Flowers, published by Mountain Girl Press. 

Padgett’s July 1, 2021 release, The Summer the Air Changed (Little Creek Books, an imprint of Jan-Carol Publishing), is a coming-of-age story set in the Appalachian Mountains of North Carolina.

Padgett is a member of the North Carolina Writers’ Network and the Women’s Fiction Writers Association.

Padgett and Ed live on pastoral and inspirational Lake Winchester in Raleigh, North Carolina, where Padgett writes the southern voice, from the mountains to the coast.

You may contact Padgett and find her books at www.padgettgerler.com.

Twitter https://twitter.com/mpgerler

THE SUMMER THE AIR CHANGED

Life is right normal for fourteen-year-old Bit Sizemore and her precocious twelve-and-a-half year old best friend, Wisteria Calliope Jones, until Bug Jeter sees Jesus in a rock and changes little Lovington, North Carolina forever. Tourists discover the sleepy mountain town, big-city pretty-boy Palmer Lee Compton threatens the girls’ friendship, and the town’s pets begin disappearing. That’s when Wisteria decides that it’s up to her and Bit to solve the mystery of the missing pets, while side-stepping the minefields of hurt feelings and teen crushes.

BUY HERE

 

Tags: featured, women writers

Category: On Writing