Listen To Your Mother Archives

When I submitted a short story to Listen To Your Mother, I had no idea what I was getting into. I saw the call for submissions through Arkansas Women Bloggers. One of my goals for 2015 is to push myself to write outside my comfort zone and get more involved with local writers. This seemed like a good opportunity to do both.

I was asked to audition. I knew this might happen. Still. A live audition. I hadn’t done that since…wait…never. Consumed with sports in high school, I didn’t do musicals or plays, even though I suspected they might be fun. Fortunately, I’d had the opportunity to read my work to an audience in grad school, so the thought wasn’t paralyzing.

I asked my husband if a 3 hour drive south for a 5 minute audition was worth it. “It is if it’s important to you,” he answered. I decided I wanted to give this Listen To Your Mother thing a shot. At my audition, I read my story with all the love and enthusiasm I’d felt while writing it.

In March I learned I’d been chosen to be part of the show! I was ecstatic, and admittedly, still clueless about what I was in for.

Our first cast photo! What a great looking bunch of storytellers! Photo: Sarabeth Jones

We met in late April for the first rehearsal, a sit down read-through of everyone’s stories. I was floored as each person shared their story. Some brought the group (and their authors) to tears. Others made us roar with laughter. When we finished, I knew I had chosen, and been chosen, to be part of something special.

Those stories stayed with me all weekend. At the second rehearsal, as I heard the stories again, I reflected on the power of story to draw people together where no connections existed before. I felt connected to the others in the room, people I’d only met once, through their words, the intensity of their stories, the depth of emotion and strength behind each one. I’ve been exploring life through story this year, and here was another example of how important our stories are to us, but how important it is to share them with others.

The day of Listen To Your Mother Little Rock, I woke up excited. I tweeted. I taught. I hardly ate. I dressed up. We drove three hours south. “Are you nervous?” my husband asked. I shook my head. “Not yet.”

The cast met in the theater and the producers arranged us on stage. We took pictures. We got momentarily trapped in an elevator when we got caught up taking cast selfies and forgot to exit on our floor. We ate snacks and tried not to be nervous about sharing deeply emotional stories to the crowd of 250 gathering in the auditorium below. Finally, it was show time!

I’m not sure there’s anything like walking on stage to applause. As each cast member shared their story, I listened, knowing what was to come, and still moved by each story. When it was my turn, I walked confidently to the mic, knowing this story was ready to share. I spoke of my mother’s love for her small town, of the many stories she’d lived, and how that story connected to mine. I walked back to my seat to applause.

My part over, I listened to the rest of the stories with a deep appreciation for what my fellow cast members had written. Even though every story was unique, from grief over the death of loved ones, to depression, to the struggles and triumphs of daily living, every story took its place in the broader story we were telling about motherhood.

I couldn’t help but think, though, that we were contributing to a bigger story: life and the human experience. Through our personal struggles, victories, relationships and fears, our stories brought 13 cast members, 4 directors and producers, and 250 strangers into a shared experience and a new understanding of life.

Life is fleeting.

Life is precious.

Life is a struggle.

Life is laugh out loud funny.

Life is eternal, if not here, then in the way our stories live on through others.

After the show, we had a champagne toast. We mingled with the audience. I felt overwhelmed and grateful for the many compliments I received.

“I loved your story. Thanks for sharing. You got it just right. That’s how that time (the 1950s and 60s) was.”

This is why actors act, I thought. For the way the audience reacts after the show.

After the show, while having drinks at an outside patio around the corner from the theater, someone rapped on the glass window from inside the restaurant. When I looked up, a lady inside held up the Listen To Your Mother program. She pointed to me and gave a thumbs up.

“Your story,” she mouthed through the window. “My favorite.”

I beamed. Stories were still connecting us. I went to bed with a smile on my face. I woke up with a smile the next morning. That was an amazing night, I thought.

But it wasn’t just the night and the performance. It was the coming together, making a cohesive whole out of 13 individuals, and feeling the power behind our words. Even now, those words come back to me.

I want to remember them always, even though I know eventually, they will fade. But the connection made through those words, that of story, will endure.

Listen To Your Mother Little Rock Photo: Bryan Jones

We couldn't have done the show without our amazing sponsors! Photo: Jacob Slaton — We couldn’t have done the show without our amazing sponsors! Thank you especially to Jacob Slaton for his photography and time! Photo: Jacob Slaton

Recently I participated in Listen To Your Mother Little Rock, an amazing series of shows performed across the nation to celebrate all aspects of motherhood. It was a great experience and I’ll devote a blog post to it soon. In the meantime, I wanted to post the essay I read for the show in celebration of my mom. Enjoy and Happy Mother’s Day!

There Goes Your Boyfriend

by Kimberly Mitchell

“There goes your boyfriend.”

My mother’s big sister had a way of teasing her when they were girls growing up in Mena.

Mom would survey that tow headed paper boy riding by on his bicycle and giggle.

“I don’t think so.”

My mother, Gayle Lay Mourton, in 1957. — My mother, Gayle Lay, in 1957.

It’s 1957. Cokes are 5 cents a bottle, Elvis is all shook up and let me be your teddy bear while Ricky’s crooning about a teenage romance. Their posters are plastered to the walls of the bedroom my mother shares with her sister. At 10, she’s carrying her black and white saddle shoes and roller skating to Debbie’s house, even though her mother told her not to cross Janssen Avenue. She’s buying penny candy down at Reynold’s Variety. Sometimes that paper boy walks in to hand deliver the Mena Star. Sometimes he says hello.

“There’s your boyfriend.”

“I don’t think so.”

Growing up I knew as much about Mena in the 1960s as I did my own hometown in Oklahoma. School breaks were measured by how much time could be spent down in Arkansas. We’d load up the Dodge Caravan and head four hours south and east down Highway 71. As the road twisted through those old oaks and loblolly pines, breaking into breathtaking views of the Ouachitas, my mother’s eyes began to sparkle.

“Tell us a story about growing up in Mena,” we’d beg, which always made my mother laugh, but she was never short on stories.

“When I was in fifth grade, the girls chased the boys and the next recess, the boys chased the girls. If the boys caught the girls, they got to kiss them. Jane and I could always outrun those boys, but sometimes we decided to slow down and get caught so we could get kissed.”

“Ewww,” my sisters and I groaned. “Tell us another.”

Mena seemed a different place to her. I saw my grandparents’ old white house with the huge mulberry tree out front. My mother saw the tree her cousin and brother drove the go-cart halfway up.

I saw a dusty croquet set. My mother pointed to the red mallet, where Grandpa taped it together after Cousin Sammy split it open on her head during a heated disagreement. If my mother ever offers to play croquet with you, be warned, you’re in for a game.

“There goes your boyfriend.”

“I don’t think so.”

It’s 1961 and my mother’s playing cars down in the dirt with her brother when, thunderstruck, she realizes a boy could walk by. “I’m through,” she tells my uncle. “Okay,” he says, thinking she’s done playing for the day. But my mother’s thirteen now and she’s through playing trucks. She’s walking to the library in her white canvas shoes, meeting Debbie and Jane at Pete’s for malts. Cokes are 10 cents now. Sock hops are in the junior high gym with Chubby Checker and Fats Domino. They’re doing the twist in homemade spaghetti strap sundresses just long enough to keep the principal happy.

I didn’t understand why my mother always had one foot in the past, or why she loved to tell those stories. But life was changing for me. Trips to Mena became more cumbersome. “Can we get back home in time for the game? But there’s a party Saturday. I don’t want to go this time.”

“There goes your boyfriend.”

“I don’t think so.”

It’s 1964. “You better not skip choir tonight,” the pastor warns the youth group. But the Beatles are on Ed Sullivan and nearly everyone skips. As the Beatles sing, girls scream and faint in the audience and my mom watches, rapt, while Grandpa grumbles, “That hair is too long.”

“You better not do that again,” the pastor scolds the choir. But the Beatles are back on Ed Sullivan and the pastor gives up. My mother’s cruising down Mena street, eating ice cream at Dairy Queen, wearing black flats and an updo and dreaming of college.

When I graduated high school, visits to Mena decreased. Life was here and now. My sisters and I went to college. Married. Children were born, and not born. My niece and nephews are growing up in a tumult of noise and laughter and tears.

Slow down, I want to tell them. But they’re not listening.

And now I see it. My mother, raising her own children, living life in those moments, but living them out of her past. And that past, part of mine, too. Blue hydrangeas wrapping around a little white house, summer nights listening to June bugs sing, the glow of Grandpa’s cigarette joining in with the fireflies. A garden full of plump, sun-warmed blackberries that burst in your mouth. Bike rides all over town but don’t you dare cross Janssen Avenue. Those same streets my mother roller-skated. Those same streets my dad biked delivering all those newspapers.

“There goes your boyfriend.”

There goes college. There go four daughters, each with dreams of her own. There go grandchildren who won’t stop growing. There goes fifty years. There….there it goes.

But in my mother’s stories, it’s 1964 again. It’s Ricky and Elvis, nights at the drive-in, sock hops and Monopoly, roller skates and hand sewn skirts, 5 cent Cokes served cold in a bottle, chocolate malts with best friends, and that tow-headed paper boy giving my mother a shy smile.

“There goes your boyfriend,” my aunt says.

And my mother says, “Hmm.”

Mom and me celebrating Halloween and generally having a good time.

Tag: Listen To Your Mother

Listen To Your Mother: The Power of Shared Stories

Mother’s Day Special: There Goes Your Boyfriend