When I was in grade school we had an academic competition
called Storytelling. You'd think I'd be a shoe-in right, but no. The object to
the competition was to hear a story and then repeat that story. I couldn't do
that. The entire time I was supposed to be listening to the story, I was
writing my own story. I would go into the room, judges expecting to hear the
prepared story and I would tell an entirely different story. And for some crazy
reason I never won.
My love for storytelling began early with hearing my own
mother read her stories to us. We were just babies when my mother wrote us a
lullaby, A Land Not So Very Far Away.
To this day she'll tell you she can't sing, but I remember thinking that I had
never heard anything so beautiful. I was in awe that my mother had written this
fantastic lullaby (so fantastic is won 2nd Honorable Mention at this year's
Oklahoma Writer's Federation, Inc contest). And I knew I wanted to be just like
her. I knew I wanted to create a lullaby for my own baby one day.
Truth be told I haven't written a lullaby. I sing my baby
the same lullaby my momma sang to me (because it's awesome y'all). But I am
living my dream of being a writer. And I write because of my mother. It was
because of my mother that I wrote and published my first novel. It was because
of my mother that I entered and won contests. It was because of my mother that
I stood up in front of 400 people last Sunday and finally got to tell my story.
I love you, Mom.
My sister, Brandy, my mother, Cathy and me