angela's blog

When my brother and I were kids my dad used to tell us bedtime stories. I don't remember if he watched TV with us, or helped give us baths, or watched us play outside ... but I do remember that he told us stories. Stories upon stories upon stories. And of course, by the time we were about 6 or 7 we had our favorite stories. So after he told the first story, we would start requesting our favorites. "Tell the one about the fish daddy!" or "Tell the one about the pig!" until we had listened to half an hour worth of stories and it really was time to just sleep. My dad lived a life incredibly different from the one I'm living now, so different that I can't even imagine exactly how his life worked. For example, he told us stories from when he was a teenager and living in Vietnam. My favorite story was the one with the wild boar living under his bed that woke him up one night by scratching his (the boar's, not my dad's) back on the underside of my father's bedframe. My dad would make this story fascinating, complete with voices and sound effects. We would always as for the wild boar under the bed story. I was thinking about these bedtime stories the other night when I was laying in bed trying to entertain myself long enough so that I'd fall asleep, and I wondered whether I would have any stories to tell my kids when they come along someday. After all, my life, and JJ's life, and then our life together, has not been one of wild animals or jungle country. I lived in the same house until I was 17 and went to college. Then, I moved to North Carolina and went to graduate school. JJ moved a couple of times when he was a kid, but by and large he grew up in the same town, with the same friends. The best man in our wedding has known JJ since they were 3 years old. JJ was the best man in Michael's wedding; Michael was the best man for ours. If that's not stability, I don't know what is. And I wonder whether I'll have fun bedtime stories to tell our kids, whenever it is that they come along. But then I realized that even though my life isn't full of wild animals, runaways, jungles or other fantastical things, that maybe, just maybe, our kids will have their favorite stories. Maybe their favorite story will be the time that JJ bought me the exact same card, 3 months apart, for two different occasions, and didn't realize that he'd done it. Or maybe their favorite story will be the one about JJ packing my lunch one day, me reminding him that I was going to have a long day at work so I needed a snack, and so he packed me four, count 'em, FOUR, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Nothing more nothing less! And that it's these innocently thoughtful things he does, that sometimes don't make any sense, that made me love their dad even more. Or maybe their favorite will be the one about how their dad had to train their mom how to use the sound equipment, and that, over a church soundboard, that's how their mom and dad met and fell in love. Or maybe it'll be the one about how I wasn't allowed into the house to watch Steelers with JJ because he thought I'd leave him, but I got to watch Super Bowl XL and celebrate with him when the Steelers won. Or maybe one of their favorites will be the hundreds of yet-to-happen stories that we'll collect between now and when we actually have kids, and they're old enough to listen to bedtime stories. Who knows? It doesn't take a genius to tell great bedtime stories ... just someone who cares enough about the stories to make sure that someone else hears them.

Posted by Mrs. Cooper on 2.22.2006 at 2/22/2006 02:35:00 PM | Permalink