December 7 - A time for Story telling

December 7 – A time for storytelling

I was a little surprised when I woke up this morning to find that it was December 7. I had completely forgotten – the one thing we all said we’d never do was forget. And that reminds me that a wonderful thing to do is get the stories of those family members who carry the history. Oral history is becoming more and more important and my children have been begging me to get our family history down in writing “while you still can”. I am what passes for Elder Wisdom in my family. Well, I never quite seem to have time to do a whole book, so I promised to try doing a series of story books for holidays, with stories about Christmases growing up,for instance. I’ll let you know how it works out.

One of my dearest treasures is a tape my Dad made for my 60th birthday. On the tape,he tells how he met my Mom, about their life on the road in the Depression, and how finally my Mom said to him, “We have to go home now. There’s a baby coming.” The baby was me. So they made a home in Montana, and I was born in a boarding house in Kalispell. As my Dad said that as nearly as he could tell, neither he nor my mother, the doctor or the nurse, had ever seen a baby before. The Doctor’s name was Dr. Carnes. ( Years later, at a seminar in Bozeman, I met someone else the good doctor had delivered. I couldn’t tell if he’d gotten better with experience.) At the end of the tape, my Mom – then in the last six months of her life – sang Santa Lucia. It’s an incredible treasure and I want to promise you, the kids won’t critique your technique. They’ll just be glad to have it!!

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