My Daughter and I Wove New Tales Each Night

We played the ‘create a story’ game throughout her young years. The stories we created took us to far away places, inside marvelous trees, wandering castles, galloping on horses, floating down rivers to the ocean or leaping star to star. We, Erin and I, never wrote them down, which made it relaxed great fun. Spontaneous, goofy, joyful or sad, so many included her in the leading role.

Creativity, connection, imagination, play, feelings and friendships sprung up between characters and animals, we’d solve mysteries, stalk dragons and winged unicorns. The only purpose was play. Sometimes our story creation process would help solve the confusing growing up questions. It was just her and I for so many years.

Until Erin was around 10 or maybe 12, we would end the day with our stories. We’d ceremoniously plump the pillows just so on her bed, she’d climb under the covers, and we’d cuddle as the story began. The story would unfold itself by each of us taking turns, fanciful and elaborate, imaginations twinkled. Sometimes she would begin, other evenings I would. When she was younger, the stories often included the princess with strawberry blonde hair (like hers of course) who loved exploring. She was the kind of girl who examined earth worms, and caught crayfish from under stones at water’s edge. (Here she is with Papa (my Dad) digging nightcrawlers for fishing.

The story game was always colorful. We never knew where we might travel within those tales. The story would carry us wherever it led until she slept.

We might follow comets and fireflys as they lit the night sky. No one was harmed of course. We were never that sort. No one died (except the goblins.. they might fall down a rabbit hole never to be seen again.) No matter what epic tale arose each night, the princess triumphed. I’m not sure exactly when the story telling nights faded out of our daily routine. I loved these stories with her.

In fourth grade she wrote and illustrated her own little book about a fish that swam its own way. It was colorful and unique, standing out from the other fish. Of course she was processing her thoughts about herself, her being unique. She swam in her own direction, dressed herself in colors and loved singing her own songs. She still creates elaborate costumes, paints with both oils and watercolors, and she now has a professional pottery studio where she creates pottery art for sale. If you go there and don’t see what you imagine you’d like, you might enjoy getting on her email list, since she adds new items every couple of months, and she also takes commission orders. She sells at local art shows all over Greater Seattle. (Yes, this is her below!)

When she was young, I knew that my job was to stock her with supplies. I think we had more art supplies than dishes. Crayons and water colors, every kind of paper I could find, spiral notebooks and journals, art pads and canvases. Beads and bobbles, wires, fabric, lace, and rings, glue guns and Elmer’s and rubber cement, marking pens, sidewalk chalk, and glitter glue. We painted on rocks and on walls, poster board and wood. All of it was delight. At age ten she painted a flying unicorn mural on her bedroom wall, and an enormous Noah’s ark scene, animals walking two by two to meet Noah on his ark on her little sister’s wall. When I moved into this condo I hired her to paint murals on my four bedroom walls. Two walls are daytime, with gorgeous cloud layers. The other two walls are midnight skies with stars and luminescent clouds, plus one of her finished nebula paintings on canvas.

I still love playing the create a story game when I’m out with friends. While waiting for our lunch to be made, I will often just begin. (it’s a good thing they know me well and aren’t surprised). I lean close and softly say something like “the man at the table to our left has been watching the door, he’s waiting for his lover to arrive.”… my friend knows it’s her turn and whispers sotto voce.. “ He’s a little worried because she’s late, and that never happens…” I continue.. “ it’s going to be one of those conversations today, you can practically see it whirling in his eyes. He knows they cannot continue doing this”… We play the game til our food arrives. Trying to contain ourselves never really quite works, and our laughter usually draws the attention one might imagine (me with my snort laugh and all).

I realized yesterday that I still am creating short tales like this. Several creators on Substack host sites where writers play. One I have been enjoying very much is The Fiction Dealer. Miguel (our host) offers a one word prompt every day, and suggests the number of words to use. Many of us post a micro story in the comments. People from all over Substack are joining in writing micro fiction. It’s not the studious-eloquent- grammar-perfected-punctuation style of fiction, (tho many of the writers are fantastically talented and could easily produce exactly that) but rather it is just great fun. Once a week, Miguel selects a few of micro author stories from each prompt to share with everyone else. The link just above shows last week’s round up batch.

Creating stories, writing memoir or opinion pieces, sharing art, poetry, processing life, photography, philosophy is something that keeps me going when life gets too heavy. I confess that I’m skipping right on by most all of the political pieces lately. I read enough of that in the regular people news. The things I read here help calm my muscles, fertilize my thoughts, and allow my soul to exhale.

With the thousands of artistic people who have substacks, it feels truly magical that we can find our people, our tribe. It delights me that whatever fairy dust and invisible threads are operating behind the scenes, I’m a part of it and I’m so glad you’ve found your way here to create alongside me.

Below are a few more photos of Erin’s sold pottery: at Fire and Flourish Studio

Teyani Whitman

writes

Together

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