Tell Me a Story

When I was in what is now middle school, there was a drop leaf desk on the landing at the top of the stairs of the big house on the farm. I would dream of being a writer - or a librarian. I had always told stories to my sisters and to cousins but had never written them down. I could probably have gotten a prize for the most hackneyed and trite stories. They often began, “It was a wild and stormy night . . .”

I told our daughter stories too. When she was small she would say, at bedtime, “Mommy, what shall I dream about?” I would then suggest a scenario for a dream. These scenarios would often involve a fairy or a magic tree or a fantasy of some kind

When our daughter was small there was a movement in the Christian community to stop telling our children fairy tales or Mother Goose rhymes. I went to the book store and looked at some of the substitute nursery rhyme books and they were so poorly written and had no literary value. My philosophy is that if you are fairly well read, you can differentiate between what is fantasy and what is true. I have never censored what Kay read. I also read what she read so I could talk to her about the content. And so we read: Dr. Seuss, C. S. Lewis, J. R. R. Tolkien, Rumer Godden, Laura Ingalls Wilder and many, many others. We also watched what she watched on television. I am sure that we watched every I Love Lucy episode as well as The Flintstones. Every Saturday morning I knew that I could find Kay and her Daddy watching The Saturday morning cartoons. It didn’t seem to hurt her.

I never wrote a book although, believe it or not, a few women in the classes that I taught suggested that I write one. My response always is that the book stores are already full of books by non-writers. I am absolutely sure that the world doesn’t need another book by a non-writer. This blog is as close to a book as I will get. My criterion is, is this material worth being bound in leather? Until it is, there is no book coming.

previous ~ home ~ next