What I learned from the hurricane giraffes

Recently my book club discussed a marvelous novel entitled West with Giraffes (2021) by Lynda Rutledge. This novel is based on the true story of two giraffes at sea on their way to New York. The Great Hurricane of 1938 strikes, but the giraffes miraculously survive. As the protagonist, young Woody Nikel, reflects, “I never thought I’d see a bigger eyeful than that hurricane as long as I lived. But I was wrong. Because the last thing you think you’re going to see in the middle of flipped boats and buildings afire and bodies dangling and sirens wailing is a couple of giraffes.”

The giraffes, whose crates had been bolted on the deck of a freighter, made it through, a bit banged up, but alive. After a time resting and being attended to, the animals board the back of an old truck for a trek across the United States, headed for the San Diego Zoo. Woody and a “giraffe whisperer” Woody calls “Old Man” drive the truck and care for the giraffes (a true part of the story). It’s a two-week trip full of natural and human disasters, near catastrophes, and a bit of romance with a photographer named Red.

The giraffes are the stars of this story. The giraffes and the relationships that can develop between animals and humans. As the book jacket notes, this book “explores what it means to be changed by the grace of animals.” While the book is full of disasters, the hurricane being only one of them, it is also full of natural wonders, the giraffes being the chief example.

But what I want to write about in this blog on aging is the frame-tale that surrounds the story. Woody Nikel is now 105 years-old and living in a nursing home he doesn’t particularly like. His friends are all dead and all his memories are in the far past. But the memory of his trek with the giraffes, Old Man, and Red persists and he finds himself thinking about them more and more. But he has long stopped trying to tell the story, thinking it matters to no one but himself.

And then he remembers Red’s baby, a woman now, who knows little about this part of her mother’s life. It’s like a revelation. He reflects,

“It’s you.

“That’s when I know I’d been a foolish and selfish man.

“It is a foolish man who thinks stories do not matter—when in the end, they may be all that matter and all the forever we’ll ever know. So, shouldn’t you hear our story? Shouldn’t you know how two darling giraffes saved me, you, and your mother, a woman I loved? And it is a selfish man who takes stories to the grave that aren’t his and his alone. Shouldn’t you know your mother’s brave heart and daring dreams? And shouldn’t you know your friends, even though we’re gone?

“I knew, then, there was something else an old man could do. I found a pencil and I began to write.”

During the first year of the pandemic when I was especially missing contact with my family, I began thinking of all the stories of my life that I hadn’t yet told my kids or grandkids. What if I never got the chance? Would all those stories just disappear?

So—I found a pencil and I began to write. Well, actually, a computer. But I spent the better part of that year in isolation writing down the stories, starting with the ancestors, writing a chapter on my parents, then telling stories about my growing up years, then life as a wife and mother, as a missionary, and as a writer. Seventeen exciting (to me) chapters. I’m leaving open the last chapter on growing older. After all, my story’s not over.

I’m not famous and I don’t think many people will be interested in this book. And to be honest, at this point my kids aren’t very interested either. I’m hoping that someday some curious granddaughter will start wondering about that funny old lady. Maybe someone (or two or three someones) will read and love the stories, knowing a little more about where they came from.

Maybe. Maybe not. But the stories will not die when I do. And I get a great deal of satisfaction just knowing that.