Stories with Brandy: Grace and Gratitude

"Stories with Brandy" - our first storytelling evening here in Australia.

Last week, seven of us gathered around Brandy, our camper van, at a park on Australia's Sunshine Coast. Interior lights glowing through the open door. Camp chairs arranged on outdoor rugs. Wine and appetizers on a small table. The evening light filtering through the trees near the water.

We called it "Stories with Brandy" - our first storytelling evening here in Australia. The theme: finding gratitude and grace in unexpected places.

I believe that storytelling, especially when meaningful and personal, invites us into vulnerability. And I believe in vulnerability and authenticity as qualities that make us stronger. Through stories, we practice our own edgework and get to know each other in different ways. Perhaps more importantly, we get to know ourselves. We are wired for storytelling, and when we tell our stories and participate wholeheartedly in listening to others' stories, we feel more deeply connected. After all, storytelling is about experiencing a journey together, and we are transformed not only in the telling but also in the participating.

This session of Stories with Brandy invited everyone gathered to consider gratitude and grace at a deeper level. Many of us have a gratitude practice – informal or formal ways of acknowledging the good in our lives. But sometimes gratitude and grace arrive unexpectedly, such as when we experience gratitude for what we didn't get. Or when something good was initially disguised as a problem or a challenge. Or a story about someone who's grace in a difficult moment impacted or transformed our life in meaningful ways.

I was grateful to be able to hold space for others as they told their stories and for that same space being held for me.

Here is that story - one of gratitude for what I didn’t get.

Naldo, Zezinha, and Anna stood at the gate. Holding each other, tears in their eyes. They seemed a little lost. And while we all knew we would never forget our time together, we all sensed that an era had come to an end.

14 years in Brasil had passed in the blink of an eye. And yet, that’s not entirely true. I lived a lot of life in those 14 years, and life in Rio de Janeiro had been filled with adventure. Learning Portuguese, discovering the carioca culture (carioca being a native of Rio), getting married, traveling, having two children, earning two advanced degrees, and buying my first house.

Oh, I loved that house. In fact, in the entryway of our home in Seattle are the front doors of that house on the road - Rua Romao Cortes de Lacerda. They are odd pair of French-style doors, tall, made of antique ipe, a brasilian hardwood found deep in the amazon, and taken from a fazenda – a farmhouse. They weigh a ton and I moved them across the world, living for our two final months with no front door because the shipping container had left the port months earlier. They are tangible reminders of the life in Rio and of that house and its gardens with cascading flowers, Jaboticaba, banana, and coconut palms, Mango trees and monkeys.

Moving to Brasil was one of those forks in the road. Sometimes in life you can look back and see how one decision put you on a path and that everything afterward unfolded because of that moment. I call those moments watershed moments. I am not sure that this is the correct use of the term, but I think of water falling from the sky and onto the earth. The watershed onto which it falls determines where, eventually, the water flows. So, yes, I think of my decision to move to Brasil a watershed moment. Nothing, certainly not me, would ever be the same.

Zezinha was our nanny, hired before Emma was born. I was one of those dads-to-be that despite a predisposition to research, study, and ponder the fuck out of everything, I had somehow arrived on the cusp of the birth of my children with very little working knowledge of what it meant to have a baby. Zezinha helped raise Isaac and Emma and somehow, despite her youth, brought generations of Brasilian wisdom on raising children.

Over time, Anna joined what we now lovingly referred to as the household staff, when in reality these were our friends. We took good care of each other – Anna managing the household and cooking for what was now a staff of three with Naldo joining our little family as our gardener. Zezinha still taking care of Isaac and Emma, but really taking care of all of us.

Today, Zezinha, Anna, and Naldo stood at the gate of that house we all loved, with the missing front doors and the bougainvillea in full bloom. The taxi was waiting, which meant we were already late even by Brasilian standards.

We had made the decision to leave Rio 18 months before. When we bought the house, our sense is that this a very long-term commitment. We would live in Brasil. Period. We didn’t really think beyond that. But life had become complex. We still loved the sandy beaches, the glistening water, and the rainforests. We loved how monkeys came and went through our house and how it was an endless struggle to keep the jungle at bay. But increasingly, we felt at risk. Not that we were direct targets for kidnapping or assault, but when I made the decision to bullet proof all the school windows and when a fourth grade teacher called me, right before parent conferences, to help her deal with a bullet hole that she found in her classroom wall, we knew it was time to go.

I applied to four positions – in Morocco, Peru, Washington DC, and Las Vegas. We flew to each one, interviewed with the board, got to know the cities, and then within weeks of each visit, learned that I was runner up. The headship had gone to someone else. I am a fortunate person. I work incredibly hard and have had some extraordinary challenges to overcome. But, I know that I am a fortunate person in life. When I set my sights on a goal, I put all my effort, my vision, into achieving that. And I do. But not this time. I found myself a little surprised that I didn’t get the first job I applied to. I was completely shocked when I didn’t get the fourth one.

And then came the call from the consultant to take a look at this little school outside Seattle. It was everything I didn’t want. Too small, for one.  But I applied anyway and thought, “What do I have to lose by flying to Seattle for an in-person interview?”

I fell in love with Seattle and the school – and I got the job.

That was the moment when I first experienced gratitude for what I didn’t get. I didn’t get those other jobs because I was meant to be in Seattle, another watershed moment. This one decision put me on a new path and everything afterward unfolded because of that moment. Twenty years later, I remain deeply grateful for what I didn’t get.