The Story I'm Choosing to Tell

Things are moving along with my novel. I haven't finished yet, but I feel good about where I am in the process. This Thursday, October 15, I leave for my writing retreat, and I hope the time away will give me the momentum I need to carry me through the end of the year.

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been critiquing excerpts from fellow retreaters. I'm discovering that finding any level of comfort with critiquing someone else's work is hard! I look forward to receiving honest feedback on my own writing, but offering that same feedback to others feels like a different challenge altogether.

Then, last night, I had an idea.

I decided I had enough time to create a book for my grandchildren for Christmas. Using ChatGPT, I generated a list of questions I could answer in recorded messages. The idea is to turn my stories into a book with QR codes so my grandchildren can scan a page and hear me tell the story in my own voice.

The first question was simple enough: What were you like as a child?

I knew the answer. Or at least, I thought I did.

I had heard the stories all my life. I was the child who got into trouble, who played with things that weren't toys, who talked when adults were talking, and who ran away from home. I knew exactly what I was supposed to say.

I put my hands on the keyboard and began to type.

Then I froze.

I realized I was about to tell my grandchildren the story of my childhood the way it had been told to me. I was about to hand down the familiar description of the little girl who was always in trouble, the one who needed so many spankings.

But was that the whole story?

What did I want my grandchildren to know about the little girl who would become their grandmother? Was I really just a troublemaker? Or had I accepted a description of myself without ever stopping to consider what might have been happening beneath the behavior?

I began to think about two memories.

When I was little, I moved my grandmother's radio Bingo game and ruined it. She was furious. She told me how terrible I was and muttered words under her breath that I couldn't understand. I was too young to explain myself or even to understand the full extent of what I had done. But I began to feel that no one really cared what I had to say.

I wanted attention. When adults were talking, I talked, too. I know now that interrupting was rude, but I wasn't thinking about manners. I was a child trying to find a way to be heard.

I was lonely.

I spent much of my early childhood with babysitters. I didn't have neighborhood friends when I was very young, and I often felt overlooked. Then I started school and discovered that a little girl named Regina lived right down the road from me.

I wanted to play with her.

There was just one problem: I had never left the house alone.

Eventually, I worked up the courage to go. I would run down the road to Regina's driveway and stand there, hoping she would see me and come out to play.

Sometimes she did. Sometimes she didn't.

When Regina came outside, I had a friend. I had someone to play with, someone who wanted to spend time with me. For a little while, I wasn't the child who got into trouble. I was just a little girl having fun.

Of course, the longer I stayed, the more likely I was to get caught.

And getting caught meant getting a spanking.

I got a lot of spankings for going to play with my friend.

Here's the funny thing: I don't regret it.

Looking back, I see a little girl who didn't always make the best choices but who wanted something very ordinary. She wanted companionship. She wanted someone to play with. She wanted to belong.

I wish I could sit beside that little girl for a while. I would tell her that wanting a friend wasn't wrong. Wanting to be heard wasn't wrong. And making mistakes didn't mean she was a bad child.

I cannot change the way my childhood unfolded, and I'm not suggesting that every behavior was acceptable. But I can look at those memories differently now. I can acknowledge that I sometimes misbehaved while also recognizing that I was a lonely child looking for connection.

Both things can be true.

That is the story I want my grandchildren to hear.

I want them to understand that when we look at someone's behavior, we don't always see the whole person. We see the interruption, the outburst, the rule broken, or the choice that frustrates us. We may never stop to ask what that person is feeling or what they are trying to communicate.

Sometimes, the person who seems to be making the most trouble is simply the person who most wants someone to notice them.

I know, because I was that little girl.

And when I finally found a friend down the road, I was willing to risk a spanking just to spend time with her.

I still don't regret it.

As I sat down to answer that first question, I thought I was simply recalling a childhood memory. Instead, I found myself questioning a story I had carried for most of my life. I realized that I didn't want my grandchildren to know only the little girl everyone said was bad. I wanted them to know the little girl who was lonely, who wanted to be heard, and who kept trying to find a friend.

Maybe that is one of the gifts of writing. Sometimes we begin with a story we think we know, only to discover that there is more to tell.

And perhaps that is a lesson worth carrying into my retreat, too. Whether I'm writing fiction, critiquing another writer's work, or looking back at my own life, I want to remember that there is almost always more beneath the surface than we see at first glance.

I am learning to look again.

This time, I'm choosing to tell the whole story.