I Come From a Family of Storytellers
If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, we have at least to consider the possibility that we have a small aquatic bird of the family anatidae on our hands.. ~Douglas Adams
I learned to read at a very young age, and I believe that this is due, at least in part, to the fact that my mother would spend hours with me drawing pictures and telling me stories. The letter "A" would become a house for ladybugs with smiling faces who would swing on grass blades in their front yards. When I was older, my mother would repeat to me the stories she overheard as a young girl--about the dangerous ship crossing my great-great-great grandfather and his family made to come here and the child that did not survive the trip, or the castle that was left behind somewhere in Ireland, or the fire that wiped out an early homestead.
One of my great-grandmothers was the family genealogist. She left to my mother, and then to me, a rich wealth of family tree information that, with only a little digging on my part, has turned into a rich vein of stories. I am also blessed with distant cousins who have been able to supply for me a wealth of information on my father's side of the family, which is no less wealthy in its mine of everyday demons and angels.
Spending time trying to hunt down the people you are related to, whether it is by listening to the stories of those who still remember, or reading a newspaper article, or exploring census records, is fulfilling in many ways. For me, there is the pleasure I always get from research--from clicking little facts together until they make a truth, and then placing that truth into the record with the hope that, at some point, someone else who needs that truth will be able to use it for their own discoveries. There is also the joy of tale-sharing, which is very much like research in that it is a way of passing on information, but much deeper information that that which can be harvested by facts alone. It would be impossible for me to tell you how grateful I am for the legacy of myths, folklore, and morality plays that has been left to me. I offer them here to you as what I hope are interesting stories in their own right. If there is any thread here that helps you tie up your own loose end, I'd love to hear about it.