A 35-year old story surprise…

I’ve been writing little stories and books and poems since I can remember.  I’ve always loved the flow and beauty of syllables and words and the wonderfully mind-boggling way words create images in people’s heads (probably why I became an English/Reading teacher and loved teaching for almost 30 years!).

I have piles of manuscripts, some finished, some not, some recently re-discovered in a box in our garage at our new home.  Most of these stories were written for my kids and grandkids, attached to some moment or incident or characteristic that I wanted to capture in writing.

One of these recent discoveries is a story I wrote for our son Adam (35 years ago, when he was 4 years old), about his penchant for being a picky eater…

Adam loved the story, even in its type-written, unillustrated format.

When I rediscovered the old manuscript, I thought it would be fun to have Adam’s daughter Maddie, my granddaughter, illustrate the story for her Dad.  Maddie was all in and we decided that Adam’s 39th birthday would be the perfect time to give him a little gift from both the past and the present.

Grandpa soon became involved as well, figuring out how to (surprise) print a few copies of the book at our family printing company… a difficult task, seeing that Adam works at Barrington Printing as its Sales Manager.

But Maddie, Grandpa and I pulled it off quite well, thank you…

On his birthday in early July, Adam (aka Daddy), unwrapped a piece of his past as a very present present!

Adam loved it!

I had so much fun with Maddie and the story and the illustrations and Grandpa and the “secret” and the surprise; and because the story is about eating, Maddie and I are now working on ideas to use our book for a volunteer project, hopefully collecting cans of soup for our local food bank.  I’ll keep you posted!

Ah… words and stories.  They never get old!