Blog

My daughter asked me to tell her a story about when I was a little girl. This is a frequent occurrence, second only to wanting to hear stories about when she was a little girl. But lately she’s been saying she has heard all the stories about her childhood, over and over.

“You need to get a better rememberer,” she told me. Aren’t kids just the best at making you laugh while also taking you down a peg?

I’d actually been thinking about the question, did I always enjoy writing? So I told her what I’d dredged up about that.

I don’t remember writing down stories as a kid, no. But I was always, always telling stories.

I told stories to my family. I remember my dad remarking on how much I liked to tell stories.

I told stories in my head. I daydreamed constantly and still do quite a bit. There were always heroes and bad guys. I remember once, in college, my sister Penny looked over and saw a certain look on my face. “Is there a bad guy?” she asked. There was, of course.

I sang songs, which are stories set to music. As a young girl I composed a song, of which I faintly remember one line, “I love my Jesus,” perhaps? My mom, an amazing pianist, wrote it and the music down and we performed it for church. After that a church member took a photo, wrote a short story and sent it and sheet music to my song to a church magazine, in which it was published. As an adult I still sometimes make up songs to sing to my child.

I also wrote a lot of poetry. This is the one thing I haven’t had the urge to do for years. I think I wrote my last poem sometime during or just after college?

The point is, I may not have written stories down until I became a journalist, but I have been making up stories my entire life.