Tell Me A Story

I've been thinking lately about the reasons why I keep writing on this blog, and who I am writing to.  Who is my audience?  A lot of mommy blogs are written in "report style", a list of goings-on, presumably for the grandparents that are faithfully reading the adorable if not run-of-the-mill stories about their faraway grandchildren in an attempt to feel close to them.  

I do that a lot.  

Some mommy blogs are written in "advice style"- tips from one mom to another who is more seasoned, knowledgeable, and confident in her mothering skills than I am in mine.  I read a few of those blogs, as long as they don't get too confident.  

Then I just feel inadequate.  

Still other mommy blogs are written with self-deprecating humor in an attempt to make other floundering moms feel like they are not the only ones that have ever sent their kids to school having eaten goldfish crackers for breakfast and wearing week-old underwear.  I read those humor blogs a bit, too.  

With each of those voices that I hear in other people's blogs, I lose or find a little bit of my own voice.  Some blogs inspire me to write more, others leave me thinking that nothing I have to say is worth being written down.  But recently I realized that there is only one blog that is being written right now that my children will have any interest in reading in the year 2024 or 2034 or beyond.

This one.

And I hope that, above all other audiences, my children will read this blog and know that it is a happy story of a wonderful family living a dream come true- my childhood dream to someday grow up and "be a mom".  

Just a mom.  

Just for them.  

Hi kids!  

Nearly every night one of you asks me to tell you a story about when I was a little girl, and this is the story I told you tonight.  Yep, that's me on the right.  I think I was six years old in that picture.

When I was a little girl, I had an uncle with a hook hand.  Uncle Larry was a cowboy and he always wore a big white cowboy hat and leather cowboy boots and and big shiny belt buckle with a picture of a stallion on it.  My Uncle Larry accidentally cut his hand off when he was working in the barn, so then he had a hook hand.  It had two pinchers on the hook so he could pick things up, but most of all he used those pinchers to pinch my nose.  And I hated it!  

Every time I went to his house he would say in his gruff cowboy voice, "Come here, Mel" and he would pull me onto his lap and he would pinch my nose so hard that my eyes would water and I wanted to cry but I never did.  But I still hated it.  

Uncle Larry had a big barrel of Red Vines licorice in his kitchen.  I loved that licorice and I always wanted to eat some.  But to get some licorice I had to go into his house and if I went into his house I had to let him pinch me on the nose first.  I could never decide if getting the pinch on the nose was worth getting the licorice.  What would you do?  Would you take a pinch on the nose to get some yummy licorice?  Or not?

(We discussed this for a bit and Adam reasonably decided that he didn't like licorice that much so he didn't think it was worth getting the pinch.) 

Well I really like Red Vine licorice and so I decided that it was worth getting the pinch on the nose to get the licorice, but I realized that if I held my breath while he was pinching then it didn't hurt so much.  So whenever I went over to my Uncle Larry's house I would sit on his lap, hold my breath, and take the pinch so I could get my licorice and then go play with my cousin Becky.  

My cousin Becky lived right next to my Uncle Larry.  Their houses were both on my Grandma and Grandpa's farm and all three of them lived in a row.  First was Grandma and Grandpa's house, and then there was cousin Becky's house, and then there was Uncle Larry's house.  I loved to visit with them because I loved to play with my cousin Becky.  She had a trampoline that we loved to jump on and she had a barn in her backyard.  One day we dragged the trampoline over to the barn and then we climbed up onto the roof of the barn and jumped down onto the trampoline.  It was so fun.

(We talked about this for a bit, too.  Adam thought it sounded like a lot of fun to jump off a roof but worried that he would possibly break his legs in the process.)  

After we jumped off the barn roof for a while we decided to see the animals that lived in the barn.  My cousin Becky had peacocks in her barn.  I loved to look at the peacocks and I always wanted to grab their beautiful feathers but they were mean!  And they cried out so loud that it hurt my ears.  I was always afraid that they would peck my eyes out if I tried to grab their feathers.  But one day my cousin Becky and my brother Aaron and I decided we could get a feather that had dropped to the ground by distracting them and running in and grabbing the feather.  And it worked!  And then we had a long beautiful feather that we tried to write with like it was a real quill pen.  

There were also pigs on my grandpas farm, and they were huge and fat and pink.  They were lazy and rolled around in the mud and liked to eat apples.

And out in the pasture there was a bull.  A pasture is a place where animals like to relax and eat grass.  A bull is a boy cow with big horns and they can be mean.  Sometimes they get mad and charge at people and try to stick them with their horns and toss them up into the air.  So we tried to avoid the bull, but our friends Jake and Amy lived in the house behind the pasture.  We could take the long way to his house around on the dirt road or we could take the shortcut through the pasture, but that meant going past the bull.  Which way would you go?  

(We discusses this for a while and Adam said he would go around on the dirt road to be safe.) 

Well we wanted to get to our friends house quickly so that we could play because he had a really cool clubhouse at the top of his playground and we wanted to play in it.  So we decided to cut through the pasture. 

We had to pull back the barbed-wire fence (which I had to describe to my city kid) and then we were in the pasture.  

And the bull, who was eating his grass, looked up at us.  

And then we started to walk across the pasture.  

And then the bull started to walk across the pasture toward us.  

So we walked a little faster. 

And then he started to walk a little faster.  

And he put his head down like maybe he was going to charge at us with his big horns.

And so we started to RUN!

And we made it to the other side of the pasture and we pulled back the barbed-wire fence and we hurried through and we were safe!  And then we got to play with our friends Jake and Amy in their clubhouse. 

The End.