Listening is an act of love

There's a lot of talk going around about resolutions. And most of you probably think it's silly to actually still be making them year in and year out, and you might even wonder why I'd set myself up for failure time after time. Blame it on my forgetfulness. . . I seem to forget how horribly wrong they went January 1, 2007; or that I hold out a very naive faith that this time. . . yes, this time. . . it will be better.

For whatever reason, I try to pen a few things each New Year's Eve and when 2008 rolled around, it was no different.

I won't bore you by listing my weight loss goals, how I am going to save $1 million and be debt free or even how I pledge to only eat green leafy things. Instead, I want to talk about how I am going to concentrate on the relationships in my life. It's corny, I know it. It's so sappy sweet that you are now in a diabetic coma, right?

Ok, stick with me on this. I am a self-professed telephone hater. I know it's not natural. I know it's a bit odd, being a woman and all, and not liking to talk on the phone. I blame it on those that came before me. My grandmother literally had a phone glued to her ear. My mother calls daily. There is even a photograph of her on the phone with a one-year-old me seated between her legs on the floor playing with a plastic toy phone. They were grooming me at an early age, but it just didn't take. Sorry Mamaw. Sorry Mom. I'm a good shopper, I roll my socks and I'm trying to drink my coffee black, all is not lost.

This lack of love for the the telephone is a bit of a hang-up (note the pun) in many of my relationships. It is. When you don't return calls or are a bit distracted during them (when they call me, that is), people tend to take that as a sign that you don't want to talk to them. It's not the case at all. I just don't have phone skills.

Many of my friends, family and loved ones (I think I covered everyone with "family and friends", but there might be someone I love that is neither, I guess) live at least two hours away, some much further. In some cases that's a good thing, distance does make the heart grow fonder. For others, it's a continental divide that we can't seem to cross. It gets tougher given my distaste for chatting via the phone.

I'm an avid e-mailer. I even still send handwritten letters, but, sometimes that's not enough.

For Christmas, I got the most amazing gift. My mom gifted me the Listening Is an Act of Love: A Celebration of American Life from the StoryCorps Project pack from Starbucks (God bless Starbucks.) If you aren't familiar with the StoryCorps Project check them out at the link. Basically it's an initiative to record an oral history by inviting people to interview each other in a sound booth that moves across the nation. Mothers, daughters, fathers, sons, friends, grandparents, partners. . . all sorts of people are doing this. Some use prompting questions provided by the organizers, some go at it all on their own. A copy is given to the participants and one is added to the Library of Congress. Some of them are played on NPR as well, that's where I encountered them.

The book set, which is raising money to continue the StoryCorps project, contains a CD with a few of the stories. After opening the CD on Christmas Day, Cynical and I listened to it as we drove from one house to another and as we moved through each "story" we wept at how sweet, how sad and how touching they were, these little conversations between people.

Call us saps, call us girls, I don't care, it was very moving. And it made me regret the conversations I'd been missing out on because I didn't want to pick up the phone. Granted, it's not the same as sitting face-to-face as in the StoryCorp plan, but it's still a beloved and important thing to reach out and talk to those you love.

So, I may not be recording conversations (don't get all paranoid when you hear a click when I call, I'm not taking a cue from Nixon or anything), but I will be making an effort to pick up the phone, to call those I miss and think of often. I have also made a commitment to visit them more often, to cross the continental divide and sit with them face-to-face, hand-to-hand and shoulder-to-shoulder. What's a little driving. What's a few minutes (or hours) on the phone. . . . listening, afterall, is an act of love. (And often I know I'll be on the receiving end.)

Please visit the StoryCorps site, sit back and listen a while.