Your Story. Do you find it difficult to tell?

#BlogHerWritingLab ~ Friday, April 15, 2016
Do you find it difficult to tell your story?

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I’ve always felt that Our Stories are made up of millions and millions of moments all strung together like lights on a colossal Christmas tree. Some moments shine brighter than others and these are the ones we remember so clearly. Others dim or turn to dark, fading away, fading away.

I have a sense for moments, from the extraordinary to the very most miniscule ordinary. I think there is purpose within every single moment of one’s life, of one’s Story.

Because of my belief in the purpose of the moment, I see my life, My Story, in moments. I often recount moments rather than the bigness of my story itself, and therefore I do not find it difficult to tell my story.

I had one such moment yesterday, a moment I will always cherish as part of My Story. I was babysitting for my 2-year old grandson, Brian. The day here in Rhode Island was a perfect Spring day… cool, but sunshiny, a glorious day to be out-of-doors.

My husband and I own a little old house that sits on a lot that both had seen better days when we purchased the property four years ago. We had both fallen in love with the big back yard and wanted it to be a homestead kind of place of family, of love, of play for our (at the time) 9 grandkids. In that big back yard was a Red Maple Tree… small, but lush with shade.

During our first Summer in our home, I hung a cast iron key, attached to a red ribbon, to a hook that was attached to a limb of that Red Maple Tree. (Now, of course that hook and how it got to be there is a story in itself from someone else’s story of moments!)

On the key is stamped the word LOVE…

I had bought that key many, many, many years prior at an end-of-season Christmas shop sale. I paid next to nothing for it, but I loved it.

This new home seemed a perfect place to hang that key with its red ribbon from a hook somewhere, somewhere, and it seemed perfectly perfect to hang it outside. I wanted our 9 grandkids to know, to feel, to see that LOVE each time they passed that Maple Tree in our big back yard…

Once the moment is put into motion, the moment begins a life of its own.

Our grandkids (now 2, 2, 7, 7, 9, 10, 11, 11, 13, 15, 15 years) love to climb this tree. Its trunk and its branches are rather low to the ground, so Pops and I don’t worry too much about falls. (Key words: too much!) They’ve seen this key to our hearts so many times that maybe it’s become part of the landscape. This is perfect to me.

But yesterday, on that glorious Spring day, it was Brian’s turn to discover the key. He reached up so high to point at it. I picked him up and let him grab the red ribbon and bring it down. I read the word LOVE to him and told him the story, but of course he’s just turned 2 years old, so he looked and looked at the key and studied it as my words floated around him. That’s OK, too. The words will always be floating around him!

He grasped the key and walked to our back gate, the gate that brings us back into the smaller yard of our home…

He studied that key with such curiosity.

I saw swirls of questions around him!

I knew he had discovered the secret, the LOVE, the Story… even without knowing.

Then he walked back to the tree. I picked him up. He hung the red ribbon back on the hook. And that was that.

But that really wasn’t just that.

Now that moment of the Key is part of his Story, as it is a part of each of my grandkids’ Stories. A Story of Family, of Play in that big back yard with siblings and cousins and aunts & uncles and friends.

Stories of Childhood.

Stories of Grandma & Pops.

Stories, I hope, of Moments of comfort and happy and LOVE as my grandkids grow.

Pops and I are expecting grandbaby #12 in a few weeks, a baby girl on her journey of gathering her own millions upon millions of the moments of Her Story, just like her brother Brian and each of her cousins.

No, I don’t find it difficult to tell My Story.

Each day is a powerful string of moments all strung together like lights on a colossal Christmas tree. My Moments are My Story…

BlogHer Writing Lab April 2016 Prompts! Why not join in and tell your story.