Supernatural: an intergenerational tale

Recently I found a link to audio from the first storytelling show that I participated in, the Spark Off Rose show from October 2010. The theme was “Supernatural,” and most of us told ghost stories of one kind or another. I read a story from the memoir manuscript I’ve been working on, about the few months just after my first child was born, in late 2002 and early 2003. My father had died two years earlier, and I was pretty sure that the mourning period was over and my life was now all about my new baby and how I would balance work and family. I learned that I was wrong, that my father’s spirit* still permeated my consciousness, particularly that liminal space between day and night.

It was fitting to run across this SoundCloud recording since I’m currently editing the manuscript (when I am not too tired and busy with my third baby!). Please listen (it’s just over eight minutes) and enjoy.

Spark Off Rose, by the way, is a wonderful monthly Los Angeles storytelling show, and I have been fortunate to be in the cast twice — in October 2010 and in December 2013.

*I say “spirit” with the strong suspicion that what I was experiencing was as much to do with lack of sleep or postpartum depression as the fact that I still had several years to go before memories of my father stopped being the filter and the invisible talisman through which I experienced much of life.