Holidays and Storytelling

HOW MY TOO-FARAWAY STORYTELLING BEGAN

by greatgrandpa Mike

I live in one city, my grandchildren in another almost a thousand miles distant. During one of my visits I took my, then, three-year-old granddaughter for a stroll. We paused to examine a spider’s web that spanned the space between two shrubs. A brief shower had passed earlier that morning and festooned the webbing’ strands with rainbow-sparkles from the returning sunshine.

Standing there, we leaned forward a bit to see the web clearly, I wove a story that transformed the web into a carnival and the spider into an acrobat. Granddaughter’s eyes were wide with wonder as Grandpa talked, waved, and pointed with his hands and arms to fit the story.

We walked on and stopped at a house to watch a cat on the porch playing with a yellow ball. I told another story, this time about a cat and a strange ball that bounced too high and disappeared into a cloud. Again, granddaughter’s smile showed her pleasure. For the rest of my first visit, and almost every visit later I told the family children a story about the world around us and that, some day the children of the world would live together peacefully on Planet Earth.

MOLDEVEN