I live in one city, my grandchildren in another almost a thousand miles
distant. During one of my visits I took my, then, three-year-old
granddaughter for a stroll. We paused to examine a spider's web
spanning a space between two shrubs. A rain shower had passed shortly
before and droplets festooned the web's strands and rainbow-sparkled in
the morning sunlight. Standing there, both of us bent forward peering
into the web, I wove a story that transformed the sparkling strands into a
carnival and the spider into an acrobat. Granddaughter's eyes widened
with wonder.
We continued on and stopped at a house to observe a cat on the porch
playing with a yellow ball. I wove another tale, this time of a cat and a
strange ball that bounced too high. Again, my granddaughter's
expression showed her pleasure in hearing grandpa's story. For the
remainder of my visit, and during subsequent visits, I told her, and when
he was old enough, my grandson, of the world around us and how we
hoped to, some day, live together on Planet Earth.
Visits, in either direction were infrequent. Adult-oriented telephone calls
usually left only brief moments for talking to grandchildren. Long
distance calls just didn't generate the right ambiance and enough time for
the relaxed talking and easy listening that goes naturally with a grandpa
story. Then, too, at the close of an adult telephone conversation the
youngsters are usually busy at other things, and sometimes grandpas
just don't do well as talkers.
In my situation, I filled the gap with hand-scribed and, later on, typed
stories. The letter-stories lengthened our telephone chats to plot the next
story, flesh-out characters, the environments of settings and scenes.
There are no better aids to a grandpa-grandchild telephone story
conference than our faithful friends Who, What, Where, When, Why
and How.
One letter-story followed another, often illustrated with pictures from
discarded magazines. When I couldn't find the right illustration, I
laboriously sketched an all-thumbs grandpa original. It was an
enjoyable experience for me, and feedback from the family showed it
was enjoyable for my grandchildren as well.