Carol's Corner

“Anyone reading this story will gain a glimmer of hope and see a shimmering light in a tough and trying time.” Jeremy

I often paused to question God, “Why me? Others can write their stories. There are so many stories to be told. I’m not a writer.” But the answer I received told me to keep going and be willing to write the story. I tried to learn from the writers I met. I held tight to encouragement I received from many sources. I reread notes and files. I typed, edited, deleted and typed some more. I finished the project in rough and had multiple edits done on it until finally I needed to decided on publishing the manuscript so it would be available for others to read and hopefully understand not only Amee’s needs, abilities, disabilities but also that God is still in the business of miracles today.

The process took several years. Many times, especially at the beginning, I wondered if I should stick to simply telling stories and leave the writing for someone else. Yet I had family asking, nagging, encouraging and other people wanting more of the story than I ever had time to share. I believed that this story needed to be told for more than just family and friends to hear. In January 2010 I held the result of those years of fighting the step out of my comfort zone to begin writing stories instead of simply telling them.

Amee’s Story is the true story of the incredible journey of Amee – from comatose baby fighting for her life to a young woman running track. May Amee’s Story encourage and inspire you to know that medical impossibilities are God’s miracles even when they don’t look like what we expect.

Today the book is available from me or can be ordered off my web page – http://www.carolscorner.ca

Here is an excerpt from the first chapter:

The hands of the clock edged past midnight. August 4, 1982, had arrived. The fetal heart monitor filled the room with the strong, steady beat of my baby’s heart. The contractions grew in strength, intensity and duraion. The next two hours passed in a blur of pain and anticipation until delivery was imminent.
I grabbed my husband’s hand and hung on. One more push and the baby slid out into the doctor’s waiting hands. “It’s a girl!” rang in my ears, but there was not cry! The nurse wiped my baby’s face, cut the cord and whisked her to the other side of the room. She grabbed the nose syringe, pushing the tube into my baby’s nose and throat, trying to clear the mucous.
I fought the oxygen mask another nurse tried to put on my face. I didn’t want anything obstructing my vision. i had to see what the nurses were doing with my baby. Noticing my agitation, the doctor allowed me to win my fight with the oxygen mask before crossing the room to assist the nurses. Now all I could see was the backs of the medical team frantically working on the baby I had not yet seen or held.

“A memoir should have some uplifting quality, inspiring or illuminating and that’s what separates a life story that can influence other people.” Mitch Alborn

Have you ever felt that people might be conspiring to have you do something so far out of your comfort zone it has never crossed your mind to attempt?

I found myself in that position a number of years ago. My husband had tried, for years, to convince me to write Amee’s story to encourage others, to inspire others, to let others know that miracles still happen, even when they do not look anything like we expect. I had resisted. My response had always been along the lines of, “No! I can’t write. I haven’t written for years and I don’t have the capability. I’ll tell the story but that’s it.”

Now Amee began to join her father in requesting, more like insisting I begin the process of writing the story. But how do you begin to write an ongoing story? How do I begin to dust off years of stuffing down the desire to write, let alone remember any English skills needed to accomplish a task like writing a book.

Their pleas, encouragement, nagging continued until I began to realize they might have a point. I never had enough time to tell all the story when I used it in illustrations and people asked for more. I took out years of journal notes, doctors reports, therapist and teachers reports and reviewed them all. I shed tears as I relived tough times and smiled at accomplishments. When I could no longer put off the inevitable I sat at my computer and began to write. I deleted and began again. Repeat the process over and over until I planned to quit. I was stuck. I could tell the story but write it??

I knew this memoir would have an uplifting quality. It could inspire others. But to do these things it needed to be written and I needed help. I needed a shot of confidence. A friend suggested attending an Inscribe Christian Writers Fellowship conference in Saskatoon. With much fear and trepidation I showed up and God provided some wonderful writers to teach, mentor and encourage me. I faced that computer screen again and began to write. The outcome – stay tuned for tomorrow’s blog post.

Have you been forced out of your comfort zone to share a story with a larger audience either in writing or orally? How did you cross that hurdle? What encouragement did you receive? If you are just at the threshold of taking that first step may you be encouraged to keep on the journey. It is worth it.

Ralph Nichols said, “the most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and to be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them.”

I have four children and the youngest has some special needs. I had shared parts of her story with teachers, friends and when I spoke to ladies groups or camps, as an illustration, a story of what God had and still is doing in her life but in mine as well.
We had moved to a new community where no one, including teachers, knew Amee’s story, her needs and her progress to date, other than what had been supplied in her file. With the approach of the new school year, her seizures were finally under control. Life began to settle into what I thought should be a positive atmosphere for learning. Amee looked forward to going back to school, hoping that grade five would be a great year. She had one relatively simple request.

“Mom, please talk to my new teacher. Help everyone at school to understand.”

She wanted not only her new teacher, but her fellow students to really get to know more about her and what she faced each day, so they could understand her better.

I had always believed that educating people provided the key to understanding but hearing the request come from Amee gave me a pleasant feeling. I presented her request to the teacher and offered to come talk to the class about her disabilities and her abilities. I wanted to give relevant information, at a level the class could understand, to take away the fear of the unknown.

I had the story to go with facts about cerebral palsy, epilepsy and learning disabilities. I had shared parts of it a number of times with a variety of age groups. The story could present the facts if the teacher and class were willing to listen. Amee did not have great communication skills and felt Mom needed to help others understand.

The disappointment grew as the teacher refused our request to talk to the class. She had no willingness to listen either and my daughter had a hard year. She continued to be convinced that if Mom could tell the story and people would listen, they would begin to understand. She got her wish in grade six when a new teacher allowed me to share part of Amee’s story with the class. I loved the “light bulb” moments the students experienced that day. They began to realize that what anyone needs is the same – the opportunity to be understood and accepted for who they are.

Do you have a story that needs to be told so others will understand the facts of a circumstance better? Maybe you live that story everyday or have already shared it. What were the results of sharing a personal story to help others understand?

I read this quote which resonated with me and my love of stories, not only about people but about things.

“My favourite things often have a story behind them and are usually handmade or discovered at a flea market. ” Amy Sedaris

I love flea markets, handmade items and art by people I know and do own items with stories behind them that fall into these categories. However, the first part of the quote really attracted my attention – my favourite things often have a story behind them.

Sometimes family and friends visit my house and look at all the things displayed in it. A comment I have heard, especially before I downsized my collections, went something like this, “Your place is like a museum, but you can tell us stories about the things or how you got them.”

At times I wondered if I wanted to live in home that seemed like a museum. I looked around with fresh eyes. Many pieces had family connections – items passed down from my grandparents, parents or my husband’s family. Others simply have stories of how we found them or the era they were popular. I tell the stores to whomever is interested. Sometimes the stories become illustrations in a presentation I am doing. The things I collect, that I keep, must be things I enjoy and stories make them more enjoyable.

One example is a little pair of ornamental china shoes, one perfect and the other marred by cracks, mended together, now brown with age. Why, would I display a broken and repaired ornament? What significance could this possibly hold?

These ornaments belonged to my grandmother before my birth. Grandma loved these ornaments, partly because of their prettiness, but mostly because they were a gift from her two young adult daughters. One day when I was a young toddler, my grandfather decided to do something special for me and dress up my doll. He took those china shoes from the shelf and started to put one on my doll’s foot. It did not fit but he kept trying to force the little shoe onto the doll’s foot. It broke into pieces. My grandmother picked up the pieces, glued them back together and set the pair of shoes back up on the shelf.

From the time I can begin to remember, those little shoes sat on a shelf in my grandmother’s house. I heard the story of grandpa, my doll and me, over and over until I knew it myself. One day grandma planned to move to a small apartment and offered the shoes to me. She said, “I guess we should throw away the broken one. Don’t know why I kept it all these years. But you can have the good one if you want.”

I responded very quickly, “Don’t throw the one away. I want them both. The story won’t be the same without it.”
She gave me the pair and they now sit on a shelf in my home. I tell the story over and over. The little shoes remind me of my grandmother but they are also a reminder of love. Grandma loved me and did not get upset about the broken shoe. Grandma loved the givers of the ornaments and fixed the one to keep them together.

These little shoes, mended in love, remind me too that I am loved by God, even when I feel so broken. When I give him all the pieces of my life he puts them back together. Sometimes the brown glue peeks through but only serves as a reminder of love.

I likely could do 31 days of blog posts simply on the stories behind items I own, things I am the caretaker of. I hope others in the family will enjoy them, know the stories and pass them on. I have been challenged to begin taking a photo of the object and writing the story to go with it so the tale does not get lost and the item become just a piece of junk in the eyes of younger generations.

Do you have items with stories behind them? How do you share these stories and things?

< The Wedding Dress is a short story I wrote a few years ago. It involved two generations and one dress that satisfied the dreams of two brides. This family story had been told a few times before I wrote it down. I had the photos to depict the dress, the brides and the times. After writing it, editing it and more editing, I decided to share my story with a larger audience than just family. I sent the story to Chicken Soup for the Soul, Magic of Mothers and Daughters and they liked it enough to buy the story. Even if they had never bought the story, it had been transformed from oral to written, not to be lost when a generation quit retelling it. My children and grandchildren keep encouraging me to not only tell the stories but to write them down. Of course they love it when it appears in a book but I have come to realize the publishing of any of the family stories is simply a bonus. The real gift I am leaving to the next generation is to have the stories to go with the photos and some that have no picture to accompany them. "Family history builds bridges between the generations of our families." Dennis B. Neuenshcwander Today I share with you part of the story of The Wedding Dress.

I listened to my daughter describe the perfect satin and lace wedding gown. I visualized how beautiful she would look when she walked down the aisle with the heavy satin train flowing behind her. We arranged to go dress shopping in the near future. My excitement about this special shopping trip was offset by my worries about how we would pa for the wedding dress of her dreams.

My daughter, Marles, had been planning every detail of her wedding since she was a little girl. Satin and lace played a huge part in those plans. I hoped we could find a bridal shop offering huge discounts, even one with a “going out of business sale” like we had found two years earlier for my oldest daughter’s wedding. ideas popped into my head but I dismissed most of them as unrealistic.

But there was one idea that I couldn’t dismiss as I thought about my mother’s wedding photos and her mode-like build, so similar to Marles’

Forty-five years earlier my mother had eagerly planned her own wedding. Each moth she saved whatever she could from her $100 pay cheque. Finally her saving grew large enough and she boarded a bus for the city, where the dress of her dreams awaited her. The ivory satin dress, with a flowing train, had lace panels inserted around the skirt. Tiny satin covered buttons covered the back of the dress. Matching buttons fastened delicate lace sleeves at the wrist. This elegant dress fit her tall, slim body beautifully. She saved enough to pay the sale price of $125.. . . . . .

A few days later I watched Marles lift the folds of satin from the shipping box. Her fingers caressed the softness as we examined the lace, noticing small tears in the fragile fabric. . . . . . The next morning we found an ivory lace with an almost identical pattern to the old one. . . . . .

Months later, Marles walked down the aisle with her satin train flowing behind her. Tears pooled in my eyes as I noticed the loving look that passed between my mother and my daughter. The fulfillment of two beautiful young women’s wedding dreams, forty-five years apart, was wrapped up in one gorgeous, ivory-coloured satin and lace dress.

A picture is worth a thousand words, the old saying goes. I think looking back at old photos helps us remember the words, the time, the event if we were there. If it happened before our time, we can catch a glimpse into a bygone era in a way that words may not make clear.

Recording events, scenes and familiar faces through the medium of photography allows us to revisit details that may have slipped from our memory. I grew up when cameras, film and developing were expensive. My parents did not have extra money for many luxuries and the photos of my childhood are few. Yet some exist. My mother’s family for a number of generations thought saving money, to have a photo to commemorate special life events, an important legacy to leave for their family. I loved looking through my grandparent’s photos to see what my great grandparents actually looked like as a young couple or what my mother looked like as a child and a teen.

I think about my children and grandchildren, determined in my mind I will remember details of their growth, their hobbies and activities but time has a way of dimming the internal picture. I can grab a handful of photos, or look through an album and take a journey into the past.

Have you ever taken time to look at the details in old photos? We can chuckle at the strange hairdo or clothing. We can know what type of car the family owned at a given period of time. Fashions change and I look at photos from the 1800’s and note the dark colors, the formality of the professional photo and the seriousness of their expressions. I wonder if people ever smiled during these photo sessions.

I think looking back at old photos, especially from long ago, gives a wealth of information to make our stories more authentic. I think photos do more than preserve a family’s story but provide research for fiction stories set in other eras. After my paternal grandmother’s death we spent time visiting while sorting the photos she owned. Most were marked which helped us know who the people in the photo were. One in particular aroused my curiosity. A lovely young woman stood in a photographers studio. The handwritten caption my grandmother added included these words, “A fiance of Roy.” Roy was my grandfather, dead for over thirty years at this point. Now there was no one to ask the questions that raced through my mind. “When had grandpa been engaged to this woman? “What had happened to break off the engagement?” Maybe the most interesting question, “Why had grandma kept the photo all these years?”

Can one simple picture and caption be the basis of a short story, or the start of character sketches for a longer work of fiction? Have you sorted through photos of people you might not know to be able to describe clothing, buildings, vehicles or landscapes?