Flashback Friday: Writing Your Story One Week at a Time

            

             Last week I introduced a new series I wanted to share to encourage you to write about your life so your story can live on for generations to come! You can catch the first prompt here, but let’s launch into the idea for this week.

            This week I would love for you to write (or record via audio or video) about the cities, towns and countrysides where you’ve lived throughout your life.

This could include things like…

·         If you have always lived in the same place (or even the same house) you could write about what you have loved about that…or what you feel like you may have missed by not exploring other locations.

·         If you came back to your hometown later…how was it the same or different?

·         If you have lived in a variety of places (town, city, country), which one was your favorite, and why? How about your least favorite – and why?

·         How has life looked different when you lived in different kinds of places? (Town vs. country, etc.)

·         If you have specific memories of any one place, be sure to share those!

·         Also, if you want your long-term documentation to be complete, list addresses where you lived and maybe even include pictures! This can help your descendants find the exact spots you lived throughout your life.

The stories I could tell about the places I’ve lived are far too lengthy for this post today, but I think if I were to outline what I would write about these things, I’d mention some of the following.

I would write about how I grew up out in the country, less than five miles from the guy I would one day marry – and I had no idea he was right there across a series of fields! I have more appreciation now for the country than I did when I was growing up, but I have fond memories of proper country-life things, like running barefoot through freshly tilled garden dirt and letting clean sheets blow against my face as they dried on the clothesline. I remember snowdrifts as tall as the house and riding on the lawnmower with my dad. As I grew older, I lamented the distance from our house to everything…church, stores, babysitting jobs, fire trucks…all of it. I was so ready to leave the country by the time I went to college, and only now that I’m into my forties have I seen the joy of country life again. For me, country living was underappreciated when I had the opportunity. If I had it to do over, and if I knew then what I know now, I would have appreciated the experience so much more than I did.

I would write about moving into “the city” which was not a booming metropolis, but a small city. Still, for a country girl, suddenly finding myself within a five-minute drive to just about any restaurant and store I could need was an amazing discovery. Freshly plowed streets in the thick of winter were one of the reasons I declared I would never move out of civilization again. (Never say never, Bekah.) Living in the city meant living in my grandparents’ home, and if you have read here for many years, you know how much I loved the sentimentality of that. Yet the part of town where that house sat had declined – and continued to decline over the time I lived there – so although my house was a haven, the city itself it never truly felt safe to me. I learned that the flip-side of easy access to everything meant living with multiple locks on the door and a steady diet of sirens blaring. But it also meant walking to work and church when the weather was bad and having parks and pretty paths in close proximity in the good weather. Moving to Kokomo – or at least the part we moved to – felt like a promotion, and we thought living in a suburb-feeling collection of houses was a better fit for us than the questionable city block we had known before. At that point in life, I never thought I’d live in any other kind of atmosphere.

But then I would write about the couple of years we spent in Grabill and how a Hallmark-town is a LOT of fun to live in. We were still just ten minutes from hospitals, stores, and restaurants – but the sweet little town was gorgeous. Little shops, little coffee cabin, all the aesthetics, all the small-town charm…a sledding hill and meadow for walking…it was pretty perfect. I’d never lived within such close walking distance to a grocery store, and I’d never canvassed an entire town in one evening walk until I lived there, and something about that felt right and comforting. I’d never participated in a Christmas carol sing with townspeople gathered around the town tree until I lived there, and that was a movie moment for sure. The clippety-clop of horses and the scratching of hard wheels on pavement of the buggies those horses pulled became familiar, as did the unique scents around the hitching posts. I would write about how we learned that small-town life appealed to us MUCH more than city life, and how it remains a draw for us even now.

I would write about how we considered going back to the country after our Grabill days but then fell in love with the lake – which honestly feels like country and small town mixed. The best of both worlds. Quiet as the country, but with basic amenities within reach. Serenity and convenience all mixed into one space. I’m still learning all the things I love about this atmosphere, so I will have to continue my writing as I learn.

           

For me, every living setting has had its perks. Every setting has had its drawbacks. And every setting has had its stories that have made life rich and full. I’m so glad I’ve had the opportunity to live in different settings. I’m so glad I’ve had the opportunity to visit settings even beyond the ones I’ve known from a daily-living perspective. What creativity I’ve found in the many ways people live. The stories pulled from the atmospheres of life are rich indeed. I hope you’ll preserve yours!