Randi Kreiss

Tell me your story, in 50 words

Posted

Some months ago, my son-in-law, Josh, said that he wanted to interview my parents (his grandparents-in-law), for StoryCorps.me, a free online website where anyone can post a story about him or herself. Once posted, it lives on in perpetuity. For example, if you Google “Pearl Bromberg,” my mother, you’ll find a link to her interviews with Josh. Same for Dad, Stanley Bromberg. You can also find them at StoryCorps.me or on the app.

StoryCorps.me has become a hot website, increasingly popular, along with a number of other sites, podcasts and venues, all devoted to personal storytelling. The San Francisco main library, for example, has a storytelling booth where people can schedule a 15-minute appointment to tell their stories, which are then posted online. We’re all familiar with the Spielberg project to record, for all time, the stories of the Holocaust. My grandchildren, with all their screens and screaming videos, still enjoy a real story, told face to face, eyeball to eyeball, especially if it involves their parents getting into trouble as kids.

Perhaps in reaction to the proliferation of visual overstimulation, there has been a resurgence of oral narrative and stories, and that seems like a very good trend. We’ve been telling one another stories ever since men and women were able to scrawl drawings on cave walls. Aboriginals have only their rich, elaborate stories to recount their history on earth. Stories sweeten the separation at bedtime, ignite the atmosphere around campfires and draw us closer to one another at family gatherings.

So Josh called me and asked if it was OK for him to record my parents and post it to StoryCorps.me. Of course, there’s a story to this story.

My parents are 97 and 92 years old. They live in South Florida. Josh and his family live in California, way north of San Francisco and far away from any reasonable international airport. Josh said he had only two days he could travel to my folks’, including flying time. Those very same two days, my parents had, between them, home visits from two nurses, two physical therapists, two general helpers and my sister and me. We would be there because, the day after Josh’s proposed visit, we were taking our parents on a 70th anniversary cruise.

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