A certain photograph album lay on my grandparents’
coffee table in their city home. They’d been on a train ride through the Rockies and
had made an album of their pictures and postcards. I’d kneel by the coffee
table, as a six- , seven- or
eight-year-old and just look through the pictures.
My world was circumscribed by the rural farm
community in which I grew up, with some trips to the city to see our
grandparents and perhaps an occasional drive outside those boundaries. I was interested
in what I saw and wanted to see and hear more.
A highlight of my Grade 8 year in school was the
afternoon of each school day when our teacher read to the class. All we had to do was listen. Tom Sawyer and
Swiss Family Robinson were among the stories he read, and he read them well. So
well that I didn’t want to miss school and lose parts of those stories. We had few books in our home at the time, and I
just soaked in the stories.
In confirmation class, at 13 and 14, I remember our
pastor teaching and the stories he told to illustrate certain truths. He had served some time as a young man with
the navy during the Second World War before his marriage and children. The
stories made those classes memorable for me. I know now that he was a storyteller at heart.
At church camp as a teen, as a counsellor-in-training, and then a counsellor, I loved campfire time. We sang songs and told stories, with the night at our backs and the circle of new friends and campers around the fire. I wished we could make them last longer.
Maybe that’s why I enjoyed reading to our daughters and my nursery school students. Or is it just that we all have stories within us? Maybe that’s why I’m writing and telling stories now and why I so enjoy listening to other storytellers.
As a writing instructor, I have my students write as
much as possible. I offer story prompts, pictures, word combinations to tease
them into writing. Their writing has produced fiction, humour, creative
nonfiction and some stories as close to the truth as they remember.
This week, Janice,
one of my returning students, asked if she could read her impromptu piece first. This
student had come far in her writing and is able to put a lot of meaning into
something compact, including poetry, and so I was not surprised when she said
that her story was short. She wrote:
“The
first day of writing class was absolutely terrifying. Who did I think I was
attending this writing class? Little did I know that my fear would turn to joy,
self-acceptance and [that I would gain] some very dear friends. The classes
were small but a wealth of knowledge and learning.”
With
five sessions behind her, she looks forward to learning and is confident in reading
her work. When people ask her what she does, this is how she answers: “I am a
writer.”
Stories
come from so many places and in so many forms. It’s not just folk tales or
history, but adventure and stories of bravery too, not to exclude stories of
God’s people in the Bible, either the originals or modern-day versions.
As
a member of a storytelling guild, I am intrigued by all there is to learn about
storytelling and so when I looked for a quote to use in my own book, I chose
this one by Ursula K. LeGuin, because I think it rings so true of us as humans:
“There have been great societies that did not
use a wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories.”
Carolyn
Author of Once Upon a Sandbox
2 comments:
Enjoyed this peek into what makes you tick!
Thanks for stopping by and commenting, Tracy. I will look forward to your posts as well.
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