Telling Stories

Today my husband took all 3 kids to the zoo while I was at work. I have to admit, I was slightly jealous. It was a really nice day, and apparently, they all had a good time. I got to hear about the bears, monkeys, apes, lions, reptiles, snakes and everything else they could remember seeing at least two or three times this evening. Which isn't really a bad thing. It's cute to hear them tell stories and talk about what their favorite part was.

The two older ones are both pretty good at telling me stories of how their day went and what they did. And sometimes it doesn't matter that I've heard the same story three (or more) times in a period of a few hours (or a few minutes). We all retell stories. I've heard my husband tell countless stories again and again. I know that I repeat my stories to people, too. We all do it. And sometimes it gets annoying. Like, when I'm kind of in a hurry and my 4 year old is saying, "So then, we.... we... then we went to the see the lions, and we... then.... and we saw the lions..." and all I want to do is scream because it's taken her 5 minutes to finish one sentence. And when my 9 year old chooses to ignore the rules of punctuation while speaking, and his sentences just go on and on and on. My little one tells all sorts of stories, I just can't make heads or tails of most of it. And sometimes I get a little tired out of hearing some of the same stories again and again from my husband.

But whenever I start to get annoyed by people's storytelling, I think back to an Ann Landers article that I read years and years ago. It was written by an elderly woman who had lost her husband, and she talked about how her husband would tell the same stories over and over and the woman would get annoyed and angry at him. Once he passed away, the woman realized how much she missed hearing her husband's voice and his stories. That article has stuck with me, and I think of it, sometimes quite often. My husband is a good storyteller. Sometimes long-winded, but that's part of what makes hearing his stories enchanting. Whenever he tells a story, I think of this article. My kids have huge imaginations and they remember things pretty well. Hearing them recap what they did that day, or hearing about how the apes were cool but scary, or listening to them make up worlds of their own, I think about this article. I think about how much I would miss all of their stories if they were not here to tell them to me. And I smile, and I enjoy the moments of AHA of listening to my family tell me whatever it is they want to tell me, for however long it takes to tell it.