On Writing

the timing of our stories..

I wanted to pop on and say that my next piece or story has been a real unraveling of my heart during this journey of writing. I am being tender and careful with it. Although I have known my family stories for many years, what I find ironic is how I have existed to be so busy with life that it is right now a perfectly timed gift to be more deeply moved by them.

For all the years I thought I was so felt., there is nothing like the timing of the present. I can look back and see a pieced together plan for my life and that is beyond amazing. I am profoundly proud of my mom for pouring her heart out into a book that has not been published, yet is a masterpiece of research, memory and process. I realize how hard it was for her to write, at my age now, the stories of her life and I am so grateful that she did.

We would often be visiting my parents on the coast of Oregon as mom quietly struggled to put her memory to paper, never giving way to the fact that she was doing this, while she entertained her grandchildren, made us meals and took care of our needs. To think of her accomplishment is overwhelming. I have sat and poured tears as God has me fully strapped down and focused. Last night, I said to my husband, in amazement, as if I never knew, “did you know my nana lived through both WW1 and WW2?” wow. I had such deep tears I could have easily wrecked my face and gone to bed early. It reminded me of how my own mom has also recently cried thinking of my nana. Did she appreciate her enough she thought?

I do know that to write, you will often stop in your tracks to put something down, turn off the shower, pull over the car, wake in the middle of the night and repeat words over and over in your head as others are talking to you. It’s an unplanned preoccupation. I hope that someday I can deliver my mom’s story into the right hands. For now, she always said I should pick up from where she left off and I don’t know if I have a novel in me but what I do know is that stories in small snippets are worth sharing. Our stories are worth listening to. From the time we are born, the race begins and it is honestly how we finish the race that counts the most. If we look back we can be taught. It’s like a playbook. Does that make sense?

Our stories tie us up and bind us to something much Greater than ourselves. I can’t begin to tell them all but as I stare at the stories that I have forgotten within so many stories that I know, the characters, God’s children, in the play of my life, they lead to so much grace and so much forgiveness that it is truly overwhelming me.

The little girl, born in 1911, who got Scarlett fever shortly after birth and was put in an insane asylum by the age of 4, a secret no one was allowed to talk about, dying there at the age of 10. My maternal granddad’s sister. He would ride his bike past the stone building as a kid trying to get a glimpse of her. Yet he would grow up to abandon his first child. Or was it?

I’ll be back..