I never considered myself a storyteller. A writer perhaps but certainly not someone who can entertain on a face to face basis without the aid of a book or at least a pen and pencil. See I was convinced I had no imagination I suppose it all started when I began to read stories to the children. I would do my best to make my reading of them interesting but if I was really tired I would just read it straight through and they didn’t seem to care.

However since coming back from the conference and trying to get caught up on the house work, dealing with sick children and the extra laundry they entail, having slight morning sickness and all the symptoms of being in the first trimester of pregnancy I haven’t been reading as much as I would like to the children.

Yesterday we went to take Proeun to work. Mavis had fallen asleep before we left and Avril had fallen asleep in the car. Avril stayed asleep as I carried her inside. Mavis woke up slightly and my first priority was to get her back to sleep. We usually do nap time right after dropping off Proeun so it wasn’t too out of the ordinary for Two but as a stalling tactic he requested a story. However I had one child asleep and another one I was trying to get back to sleep and I didn’t want to turn on the light and go get a book so I sighed and said “what if I tell you a story?”

I was actually surprised when he said yes. I was going to go with a old family story but he wanted one about dragons. So I had to pull deep on this one. I was even more surprised when the story seemed to just keep flowing and flowing right out of me. I left him wanting more.

In the evening when we went to pick up Proeun there were requests for more stories and more at bedtime and more when we woke up. He’ll say things like, “just one more story, please I’ll do whatever you ask.” Now I just have to keep coming up with them.

It may not seem like much but in our quest for simplicity knowing that I have what it takes to entertain my children should the need arise is a powerful feeling. It is so easy to be dependent on books, games, TV and such to entertain our children. As adults we slowly deny our imagination over time until we feel that we don’t have it. Come up with a story off the top of my head?–you’ve got to be kidding.

Then you give your imagination a little wiggle room out of desperation and exhaustion and find out that imaginations are still a powerful thing.