It seems the moment I closed the book on ‘The Secrets Widows Keep’ a creative window opened – I shipped The Secrets off and new stories drifted into focus. You wouldn’t guess it from the blog – it’s been totally neglected – but my Storyworth project is back in business and I’ve been lost in it for weeks.
I know the story of my life like I should be able to write it myself. It isn’t a fancy story – heck it isn’t even fascinating – but it’s mine. If I don’t tell get these memories down on paper they will be left to the mercy of someone else.
I posted a few snippets of the story over a year ago when I was enthused about it but then everything stalled. Actual life got in the way of the one I was trying to remember. But the story is back with a vengeance now. I’m reworking and editing and so focused I can hardly think about anything else so please excuse my absence.
For interest sake here is the opening chapter…
The Beginning
Once Upon a Time in a not so long ago there was a little girl who lived on the edge of a wild Alberta prairie…..
That little girl is a grandmother now and the edge of the prairie lives only in her olden days – the wild of it has been tamed but she remembers. She remembers when it stretched forever up the hill to a place where clouds rested for a minute before drifting off to who knew where.
The little girl who lived in those olden days was me. I am the grandmother who remembers. The stories I’m going to tell you are set in that Once Upon a Time.
***
My grandchildren call me Gramma, the same as I called my grandmother and my children called theirs – Gramma has a friendlier ring to it than Grandmother. I’m a lucky Gramma, I have four grandchildren – I’m writing these stories for them.
I love stories. My family has always been riddled with storytellers. This is not to say the stories these tellers told were always factual nor were their accounts of history always accurate but they were certainly entertaining. A story when told is always evolving – it doesn’t have a choice, it has a new vantage with every new teller, an added personal touch, an individual flare. A story told borders on fiction – facts fall by the way in search of reaction. No one tells a story if not for entertainment’s sake. A story told should not be confused with the truth.
I have a cardboard box in a dark corner of my bedroom closet, it hasn’t seen the light of a day for years. I inherited the box from my parents who stored it in the quiet recesses of their house for years as well. The box is dusty with the passage of time and the black and white photographs within it are fading. The pictures are a collection of my parent’s happy memories, they are of people long passed and of children now grown – they whisper stories that will soon be forgotten. Those stories have been left in my charge….
***
I was four years old when my family moved to the edge of the wild, too young to have anything but sketchy memories and other people’s stories about the road that lead us there and just old enough to start my own remembering.
I was born in Winnipeg in 1953 at a time when opportunities for my dad lay beyond that city’s limits. We moved where fortune took him – we lived in Port Arthur for a time and moved to Regina for a little while before we landed in Calgary, a city plunked on the edge of the wild. The wild is where my memories and childhood really begin but I have a lot to tell you about before I take you there.
(the project to date)
