Our life is a collection of the stories that we create and accumulate as we travel through life. I'll end this post with one of the most "famous" stories about me from my childhood.
The importance of stories, and how they relate history, dawned on me one night as I was listening to my Granny Melton tell the "homestead stories." My father's ancestors homesteaded a 150 farm in the Ozarks, outside the town of Calico Rock, Arkansas, in the 1860's. The original cabin was still there in the late 1970's when I visited there. Hopefully it still is. My grandmother would tell the stories that her grandmother passed on to her about carving out a life and raising generations on that Ozark farm. I realized that once Granny Melton passed away, those stories going all the way back to the 1860s would also pass away, so I started writing them down. I also wrote down Granny Melton's stories, and then her son's stories--my Dad's. My Dad loved to tell his stories. My daughter would tell you that I'm just like my Dad in that way.
My mother's side of the family was very tight-lipped. Very few stories were ever shared. When I would ask my maternal grandparents about their parents and grandparents, I would be told, "We're AMERICAN! That's ALL you need to know!" My Mom shared almost nothing as well. The topic was closed.
But by then I had a whole notebook of stories I wrote by hand about my family going back to the 1860s, and in 1995 I decided to add my stories. Since then I have kept a daily journal, now filling several notebooks. My daughter will inherit all of this.
Our life, our family history, is best communicated through the stories. The Bible authors knew that. Ask a Sunday School class of kids to explain the meaning of Romans 7. Blank faces. Then ask them to tell the story of David & Goliath. Fun! For all those reading this post, I encourage you to write down your stories to pass on to your children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and on. If you can, be the collector of the family stories. You are collecting the stories, the adventures, the history of the family's generational travels. It's the stories that brings the history to life. Like I said, start with your stories, write them down, and then collect the others.
One of my stories:
I remember looking up, and here came the dog. A mutt, average size. Head down, ears back, showing his teeth, and coming right at me. The Russians have an old proverb: "When a wolf shows his teeth, he is not smiling." This dog had been terrorizing the kids in our little complex, snapping at them, growling, nipping at their heels. Mom saw the dog coming as well and made a bee-line for the front door. The dog snapped right in my face. The dog did not know two important things about me. One is that a loose dog that is snapping at me makes me furious! Enraged! Still does. He snapped in my face, then turned around to walk away.
Flooded with anger, I grabbed his tail, pulled him towards me, and right on top of his haunch, I bit into him as hard as I could. I sank my teeth into him for all I was worth! This was the second thing the dog did not know about me--I was a biter. I was always in trouble for biting my sister, my cousins, the neighbor kids, even my parents--whoever crossed me. I remember the dog swinging his head around to look at me, and I also remember the look of utter shock on his face. He let out a loud yelp, tucked his tail, and ran. I watched him take off, then went back to adjusting my skates. My Mom had reached the front stoop of our apartment by then, and told me years later that when she saw me bite the dog, she sat down on the front stoop and laughed so hard she literally wet her pants.
For a long time afterwards, whenever one of the other parents would see my Dad out front watering the lawn or whatever, they'd say, "Hey, Gill. There's a dog over at our place scaring the kids. Can you send Steve over to bite him?"
Don't lose the great stories from your life's journey. Write them down and pass them on.
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