Time Traveling

Fourteen years ago Jim and I went to Vermont on a bit of vacation where I was also attending my first long workshop taught by premier storyteller Donald Davis. That was the first time I heard Donald ask workshop participants to "take us somewhere we can't go if you don't take us." I have never forgotten that assignment and often use it when I am working on a personal story or just time traveling. I have been time-traveling a lot this week-end. Revisiting Brooklyn, New York in 1957 when Jim I lived there while he was an intern at Kings County Hospital. Even started writing a memoir journal about that period. I have been surprised by how many details I recall and how vivid the images are. Perhaps some of that is due to my reading and working with the exercises in Marilu Henner's book, Total Memory Makeover. In this video Henner talks about the phenomenon of her extraordinary autobiographical memory. As I wrote things I had not thought about in years surfaced. For instance: Early in his internship one of Jim's patients, a Choctaw Chief, was so grateful for the care Jim had given him that he asked Jim to become his "blood brother". They had a small ceremony at the Chief's bedside. Jim asked me to bring our son to the ward so he could show Jimmy to Chief Two Bears. Everyone was taken with Jimmy. The Ward Secretary, an older woman, came up to Jim who was holding Jimmy. She patted Jimmy's hands and told Jim, "Doctor Schoettler you make good babies." Love remembering that and sharing it with our three "good babies."