“Tell me a story” was my favorite thing when I was a kid. My mom was a wonderful storyteller and she had a simple rule to encourage me tell stories. “You tell me a story and I will tell you a story”. Oh how I loved it when my mother told me a story so telling her a story was the way to get the best reward on the planet, a new story by my mother. So I told her stories. About adventures with our dog. A boxer we called boxer. His name was Teddy but my stepfather adopted a dog called Teddy, so we couldn’t have 2 dogs with the same name. Calling boxer boxer was the logic thing to do, right? We never thought of giving the other Teddy another name. I don’t know why.
Many years later I was enjoying vacation with the kids when suddenly all outdoors activities were put on hold by bad weather. My daughter said this one sentence I heard so many times when I was a kid. The sentence I loved to say myself. “Tell me a story”, sweet beautiful blue eyes filled with expectations. Yes, once more it was storytelling time. I started to tell her a story. Making it up sentence by sentence. A story about the things she loved at that moment. Horses. And a Princess and a King. And more horses. A little adventure. A happy Princess. And a lot of horses. I told her the story and she listened, and while enjoying how much my little girl enjoyed the story, I was filled with sweet memories of listening to the stories of my mother.
“Look Mama, I am telling stories now” and it felt good to come back to where I came from, to what my Mother told me and taught me. Telling stories to someone you love is so beautiful when you allow yourself to just enjoy telling the story. My little Princess is a big girl now, making her own stories to tell. And every now and then she says that one sentence that touches me. “Tell me a story”.