Story-telling

Shortly after my parents moved to Australia, my mom got a new pet - a pink parrot called a Galah, which came labelled with the name Dory (you can see him perched on my dad's shoulder in a post below).

What a fowl! He loves showering with her in the mornings, turning head-down, tail-up to let warm water run down over his back. After this, he has the hairdryer propped up on the floor and turned on, and fluffs his feathers in front of it saying "warm!" until he's dry. When we visited, he was fascinated with my then waist-length hair and would sit on my shoulder, running his beak down the length of a strand, nibbling it gently. (Birds and beasts seem to love me....)

Of course my son loved hearing stories of what Dory had gotten up to and my mom put a few on tape for him to listen to in bed each night. A few years later a second Dory-stories tape arrived!

Yesterday his grandpa sent a tape too - gramps telling his favourite stories. As a pastor he always enjoyed doing the kid's story time in church, and would go to great lengths to "animate" the stories with voice, expressions and such. I've only heard one side of the tape, but many of those stories are on it, along with a few "when I was a boy" ones.

I'm hoping to get the stories transferred to CD - the first tape is starting to wear out and I wouldn't want to lose these tales.

This is one of the best ways grandparents far away can keep themselves "alive" in their grandkids lives, and share a bit of themselves. I wish more grandparents, parents, aunts and uncles, brothers and sisters would set their stories down on tape for family, friends and future generations. Just to have their voice, their words, even if the story is a familiar one.

I guess it's somewhat akin to the old extended family tribe, sitting around the fire and sharing stories of their past, their history, their experiences - a way for the younger ones to learn their place in the tribe, in the world, in life.