My grandsons Coby and Elliot were visiting this last weekend. I was doing some bedtime snuggles with Elliot. “Can you tickle my back while you tell me the story about the king and the 3 sons that go on a trip and one is nice and the others are in a rush” “A story about a king?” I asked “And one prince stops to help the bee” Oh for heaven's sake; now I remembered. A few months ago I found an old notebook of my mothers. It is full of pages and pages of handwritten shorthand and prompts for story ideas. Unfortunately her handwriting is challenging to say the least. (I can fully blame my terrible penmanship on her). It feels like a treasure waiting to be explored. While I hadn’t successfully deciphered any of her actual stories, it encouraged me to try to create my own cockamamie fairy tale and the last time I was visiting the kids in LA I had tried it out on Elliot. I had followed one of mom’s basic templates, Good deeds would generally be rewarded with some type of good karma. Her heroes generally had the superpowers of kindness and curiosity. Her villains were mostly self-important, selfish and grumpy. It was a fairly safe bet that goodness would triumph over evil. Elliot evidently remembered the story I had made up and wanted to hear it again. Once upon a time, there was a king. He gathered his three sons and told them that he wanted them to complete a quest. They needed to travel across the kingdom. He was going to pick who would be the next king. The first son started out in a rush, certain that he would be the fastest. The second one was close behind. To summarize, the two princes hurried along and wouldn’t stop to help the various creatures along the way who needed some assistance. I barely remembered the specifics but EJ was able to prod my memory. Elliot is four. I was surprised and a little impressed that he remembered it. The first critter that needed assistance was a bee that was stuck in some honey. He called for help, but the first two princes rudely rushed by without stopping. The third prince had been enjoying his journey. He was looking at the lovely countryside and listening to the birdsongs when he heard a call. “Can someone please help me? My wings are stuck in the honey!” The kind young prince immediately stopped. “ Let me see if I can get you unstuck, but please don’t sting me if I get close” “Oh, I certainly won’t sting you, I am grateful to you for trying.” The prince used a little dry leaf to get the bee unstuck and the happy bee flew away. The next encounter was with a squirrel who couldn’t remember where he had hidden his nuts. He was very hungry. The prince helped him dig around and found his stash of acorns. I couldn’t remember the third, but there was EJ recalling all the details. “It was a snake! He needed help shedding his old skin, it was stuck” “ Oh, of course, you have such a good memory!” So eventually the youngest prince arrived at the destination. His brothers and the king were waiting for him. The brothers started teasing him about how slow he was, when suddenly lots of bees, squirrels and snakes showed up to thank him for saving their friends. The bees brought lots of honey as a gift. Then the king told everyone that the winner wasn’t the one who got there the fastest, but the one who was the kindest… The snake offered to bite the mean princes, but the youngest prince told him not to. And of course, they all lived happily ever after. At this point Elliot said, “I love you Grandma and I will always stop to save you.” and he turned over and was fast asleep. Goofy fairy tale for the win. The fact that Elliot had held on to this silly story reminded me of how much kids are taking in. I love thinking that the gentle messages from the story somehow linger. Take your time enjoying the journey. Getting someplace the fastest isn’t necessarily the win. Be kind. For more about the power of storytelling, check out this old blog post.
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