Our family gathering to celebrate Independence Day followed the usual agenda this year.  We never plan an actual agenda.  It just happens.  We feast, toast the day’s importance, catch up on new aches and pains, marriages and babies. And then begins the trips down memory lane. 

It’s the stories we remember. Our favorite stories were told long ago around the coal fire.  The stories Dad told about Ireland. The ‘troubles,’ the fiddlers, cutting the bog.  Tiny Tim and the Cratchit family always made us cry.  Brave Robin Redbreast, who had to go to the barn to keep himself warm - and hide his head under his wing - poor thing. We all learned to feed the birds.

The same stories were told over and over.  We never tired of them, or said  ‘you’ve told us that twenty times.’   All the stories ended with … “see how lucky you are?”  In other words, things might be difficult, but others have it a lot worse.  Or, 'well now, see what happened because Jim stopped to help?'    Every story had a lesson – and because we did not know it was a lesson – we remembered.

There’s magic in storytelling.  Stories, told well, are lessons.   Tell me a story today, and I will tell it to my grandchildren tomorrow.   The magic and memories continue.

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