GRANDMA TELL ME A STORY

“Grandma, tell me a story.”

Stories rush to my head. I feel like a shaken two litre diet coke with the cap slowly being untwisted. The words, thoughts, and memories are all fighting to come out first.

“What would you like to hear, honey?”

“Tell me something about when you were little.”

Alanna has frequent weekend night sleepovers. We love to have her as much as she loves to come. Well at least for the time being. On one of these occasions, she forgot to bring a book for me to read to her at bedtime.
I have always read stories to my children. The difference now is that I don’t seem to be as tired or have as many things on my mind when I read the books. In fact I look forward to it as an exceptional quality time. So many things come up when you read.

I have this wonderful memory of Bill and Jill together in our comfy armchair. Jill is about 3 months old and is tucked in under Bill’s arm while Bill is reading to Jill. He is reading her his electrical engineering manual. I remember chastising him for reading her such a book. His response was that Jill did not care about which words were spoken to her, but that she was being spoken to.

I have since discovered something better than reading a story. That is telling a story that you have buried deep down inside you. A story that you have but have not thought to share with others. We all have stories. We all have history. We all have special events that we can retell in our own words. All it takes is a little quiet time, a little prodding, and a little deep searching; and some little ears that eagerly wait to hear your story.

Well Alanna when I was young, actually younger than you are…..

I use to go to bed at seven p.m. In fact I was told that I quite frequently fell asleep before I finished my supper. However, I awoke early in the morning like 6 a.m.
I would go to the kitchen and sit with dad as he got ready for work. He made coffee. He sometimes made porridge for him and me.

“Do you like porridge, grandma?”

Well yes I do. I love it with brown sugar and a little milk. Dad always got it ready for me and we would eat it together. We didn’t really say too much. My dad didn’t speak much. But he had the best smile.
I would say good-by to him as he left for work. It was a special time with just me and my dad.

“Just like it is with you and me now?”
“Yes Alanna exactly like that.”

I continue the story that I had set out to tell before we got slightly side tracked. This one particular morning, I awoke like all the other mornings at 6 a.m. I walked down the hallway towards the kitchen, rubbing the sleep out of my eyes. You know yawning and everything.

“I know grandma, I do that sometimes too.”

As I got to the living room, I saw him.

“Who did you see grandma?”

Well that was the problem. I saw something that I had never seen before in our house and it kind of scared me.

“You were scared, grandma?”

Yes Alanna we all get scared at times. This scared me so bad that I froze in the spot that I saw him and screamed really loud.

“What did you see grandma?”

Well, I saw the biggest, whitest, fur ball curled up under our coffee table. He had four legs, two ears, a tail and two huge eyes. I was sure that we had a polar bear in our living room.

“Did you really grandma?”

Well, not exactly, but I thought so. I awoke the whole family and the big animal under the coffee table.
You see while I was sleeping the night before, a stray white Samoyed dog found its way to our home. We took it in and fed it and gave it shelter.

“Who did it belong to grandma?”

Well that was the problem, we didn’t know. And as it turned out we never found out whose it was. You see Alanna, when I was young; the homes in our area rarely had fences around their home. And dogs and cats were allowed to travel around the neighborhood free. Often dogs and cats went missing.

“Did you keep him grandma?”

We did keep him Alanna and in fact we named him “Chief”. I loved him dearly and he never scared me anymore. In fact he made me feel safe and protected.

“When I have a dog, grandma, I will probably feel that safe just like you.”

I hope so Alanna, I really hope so.