3 minute read
Once Upon a Time
from March 2020
20 // March 2020 by Bridget Gray
Bridget Gray is a native Roman & received her BA in English from the University of West Georgia in 2002. A self-professed “book nerd”, Bridget enjoys roaming through Barnes & Noble in her rare free time. Bridget & her family (husband Jarrett & daughters Carter & Avery) attend LIFE Church. About The Author “M ama, just one more story…”
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“Grandmother, will you tell me a bedtime story?” “Nana, will you tell me a story about when I was a baby or when my mama was a little?”
When I was a little girl, I used to LOVE to hear stories. My Nana used to sit with me on her front porch swing, and we would spend hours swinging in the summer breeze. I used to ask her, “Nana, tell me a story about a long time ago.” She often would tell me the story of how her house used to sit somewhere else, but that it was moved to its current location. But in her version of the story, she was a little girl and had been playing with her dolls and just looked out the window one day and the house was going down the road— with her inside—almost like Dorothy, sitting in her house while the tornado picked it up on her way to Oz! It was years before I realized Nana had made that part up.
Nana would also read to us from old nursey rhymes or the old Dr. Seuss books. What I didn’t realize as a little child, though, was that Nana was improvising half of the story to make it “more fun.” Evidently, I’d go home and ask my parents to read me the same story, but my comment was always, “That’s not how Nana told it!”
My Grandmother Moore relied more on the old faithful stories—Goldilocks and the Three Bears, The Three Little Pigs, and The Billy Goats Gruff. Whenever I spent the night with her, I would always sleep in her bed, and I just couldn’t even consider going to sleep without hearing a story from her. When Grandmother told the story, though, the Big Bad Wolf wasn’t so bad. The Billy Goats weren’t so gruff. Her sweet little voice made, “I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house down” sound like nothing more than a little tease, not a ferocious threat.
And now, it’s my turn. My two blonde-headed little girls absolutely LOVE their story time at night. If you need leverage to get them to clean their room, threaten to take their bedtime story away. Cue the crocodile tears. Our nightly bedtime story routine is more than just sharing my love of books with them. It’s more than just entertaining them or getting them to wind down. It’s spending those few special minutes with them when you have their complete, undivided attention. They hang onto every word. Often, after turning the lights off, I hear, “Will you tell me a story about when you were little?” These are the moments to share those special stories about grandparents they only know through stories. And guess what? Those stories—the ones about the people they love, even though they have never met them— those stories are the ones that they ask for over and over.
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