When I was a young girl, my grandmother poured her memories into me. I was an open vessel, ready to receive. Her stories fascinated me. As she retold memory after memory, my unfiltered imagination took me back to front stoops, farms and kitchen tables.
As my cousins and my brother bounced balls outside, I soaked up my grandmother’s family and community narratives. These stories would nourish my soul and strengthen me well into my adult years.
My grandmother planted so many seeds inside me through the decades, as I sat at her kitchen table, on the edge of her bed, in the city bus seat next to her, absorbing every word and ounce of hope she poured into me.
Now she often asks me to tell her one of her own stories. In that asking, the roles of our relationship shift. I hope I have been a good steward of her stories.
This message is adapted from “Earthwise: Tell me a story” by Venice R. Williams in the January/February 2017 issue of Gather.
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