Story Time

We found out the other day that Gracie's wayward kitty friend Figaro met his demise, on our street no less. 

Never one to favor cats, I was startled by the depth of sadness I felt, both over Figaro's death AND especially how we would address this with our beautiful, vibrant 3-year old who very nearly trembles with life and energy. Which is why, when she asked about Figaro the next night, I paused to ponder the best way to respond. Brian had no such qualms: "He died. He's gone."

While my response was essentially a more traumatized version of this,

Grace responded much more calmly.

She quickly grasped that she won't see the kitty again, that he's gone. And she's seemingly moved on quite well, despite (or maybe because of) Brian's blunt declaration. I took this interaction and tried to parlay it into something useful -- I decided to bring this conversation into the classroom.

See, my students and I have been talking about allegory in The Old Man and the Sea and why people don't always say exactly what they mean. So I told a total of about 80 students about my toddler, her long-gone feline friend, and my husband's verbal diarrhea to illustrate the contradictory point: here's what it sounds like to say exactly what you mean. And do you know how those adolescents responded? Listening to my story in absolute silence, they responded with laughter, with sympathy, and with a maturity beyond their years. (They might also have requested that I bring Brian in for show-and-tell. 😉) 

All of this convinced me of one thing: we LIVE for stories. Stories of life, stories of death, and everything in between. Because when we start share our stories, we start sharing ourselves. And there is nothing more important than sharing who we are.