Once upon a time

Yesterday, unexpectedly, Helena began to tell stories.  She can't really keep up a narrative, because she has trouble putting more than two or three words together in a phrase, but she has the structure right.

"Once upon a time," she began, and then paused, waiting for Rita and me to look at her.

"A butterfly..." again, a pause.

"What did the butterfly do, Helena?"

"It flew and played!"  A longer pause.  "And then..."

"And then what, Helena?"

"There was a girl.  They met."  Another pause, "And then..."

"And then what?"

"They played!"

Her first story went on like this for quite some time, and the rest of the day, she played the same verbal games whenever she had a chance, bringing each of her stuffed animals into the story.  And in the end, they all end up playing together or caring for each other, the two verbs which make Helena happiest.

I love stories, and always have, perhaps loving the plot so much that I am willing to overlook serious problems in character and theme and language just because I like a tale (thus my very un-intellectual love of Clive Cussler, Robert Jordan, and Elizabeth Peters, who I'd rather read than James Joyce any day).  It's interesting, though, that if Helena is right, plot isn't the first element of story.  Phatic communication is: the special words that don't really mean anything, but that point to the fact that this is a story.  "Once upon a time," or "And then...", the words Helena used as the skeleton of her story, are more a frame than a content.  They say, "Pay attention, I'm telling a story."

When we read the Bible, we often trip over the "And then it came to pass," as a translation of egeneto in Greek or (darn, I don't remember what it is in Hebrew... too many years away from grad school!).  It sounds staid and boring.  But the truth is, that the biblical authors are just doing Helena's "And then".  They're marking the story, reminding the reader/listener to pay attention.  Clive Cussler's car chases (always in antique cars, of course) or Elizabeth Peters' clever asides in the voice of Amelia Peabody are the same.  They don't so much mean anything as they draw attention.  "Look at me, I'm telling a cool story!"

And what more does a baby want that "Look at me!  Listen!"?