It's been incredibly hard for me to narrow down my favorite story for this week's
therealljidol entry. I've been reading and writing for as long as I can remember. I grew up devouring books and writing my own. It was something I did for fun, until second grade, when Mrs. Moore told me I had talent and helped me get my first story published. Then it became a way of life. That one story stands out in my memory, but, like most authors with their earliest work, I can hardly claim it's my favorite.
I have my fandoms and all that makes me squee, but those are fluffy fun. I feel a person's favorite story tells a lot about who they are on a soul-level, so which, out of all of them, could possibly be my very favorite?
Of course we have our family stories that get passed down, which always warmed my heart and made me laugh. Grandma came from cotton fields, was a riveter in the War, and sang a bit on the radio; Uncle Ron, who was hit by not one, but two trains; Uncle Pat and Uncle Mike burning down the old family home and losing their eyebrows in the process (yet the whole town pretended not to know it was them, since everyone knew Grandma and Papa couldn't afford to do anything with it). I remember my mom's stories of her youth in the Seventies, which served to keep me fairly straight edge up until I lived on my own. The story of how mom's channeling started is still one of my favorites, but that's already been told here.
Then there are the stories of my new family. My family. There's the story of how Josh and I accidentally became a family without either of us realizing what was happening (we were roommates - and then somewhere along the way, it just changed). My birth stories are definitely some of my favorites, but I've also already told both of those here. There's my wedding story, which was horribly disappointing, but one of the most true and powerful memories of my life. That's too private for this, I think. It's available on my friends list, if you're interested. My recent trips to Strawberry Fields is something I waited for my whole life, and I have yet to tell you here. It was one of the most energetically powerful things that's happened to me. But, still, none of these offer themselves up as the Ultimate Awesome One.
I've been racking my brain all week long. I nearly took a Bye over this, until I realized that it keeps coming back to the same story.
I usually tell the bedtime stories to my kids: we've been reading through the Little House books, I give dramatic retellings of childhood fairy tales (that means I like to add random craziness in, telling it in a slightly different way each time), and I often create personalized fairy tales that center around Princess Eden and Princess Ivy overcoming some obstacle and learning an important lesson. In August, when we 'started kindergarten', I tried something new with my girls. I gave each of them the opportunity to tell the bedtime story. Now, I don't like playing favorites over my kids, but Ivy's really impressed me. Eden told an awesome tale of saving the kingdom from an evil witch, and I thought it was a delightful story with some pretty good tension building. But I think I expected less of Ivy, since she was just shy of three, and her story made a warm fuzzy place in my heart that has only grown since.
Once upon a time, she told us, there was a little princess named Ivy. Princess Ivy went to the Faerie Tree, so she could go to Faerie World where everything is magic and pretty. She saw lots of faeries, but she was there for Mommy. She went up the big mountain, looking for flowers for Mom. Magic flowers. She found them and picked them, but they're magic so they won't die. She brought them home to Mom, and they were pretty, and then she gave her a kiss. The End.
Yeah, that one's definitely my favorite.