My uncle unwittingly taught me a big lesson – and it has to do with the importance of stories. And gifts.
So here it is Christmas – and you know I just launched my course related to helping people author their Life-Story in a digital photobook. So it is REALLY on my mind these days.
Those who signed up will be starting mid-January with me on the six-week journey of creating a Life-Story. And within that book will be many individual stories – some hard to share, some funny, some that will be totally new to everyone except the author. It is the compilation and publishing of those stories (along with significant photos) that will be our goal.
And what does that have to do with my uncle?
A little backstory here – my uncle was a younger brother to my mother and he and his wife never had children. Since our family was small, they were special – in fact, they were my only aunt and uncle. Plus I had no cousins (at least, first cousins). In his later years, Uncle Gerald lived a little over 3 hours away and my husband and I became his “kids” – actually, the only family within driving distance. Although they spent many Christmases with us, after his wife died he was with us regularly.
However, he was non-plussed as my kids got older, married and had little ones – he had no clue what to get them for Christmas. When he broached this with me, I suggested that since his background was in journalism, he could perhaps write something for each of them. He liked that idea.
OK, it was not an original idea – though my mother is in Heaven now, I can hear her reminding me. She also had “writing” work after I left home. She wrote a column in the local paper (sorry, not a big deal because Sudan boasted of only 1,000 folks and the weekly paper was a recitation of who visited whom). But since she wrote about current topics, politics, etc. and she was frankly good at it, her column was picked up by other papers.
At any rate, one Father’s Day she was unable to think of a good present for her father so she wrote a whole sheaf of one-page “reflections” about life on the farm and life in general. She placed them looseleaf in a stationery box, wrapped it up and presented it to him. He absolutely LOVED it! He raved about the writings to others and, for distribution at Christmas, he had her writings bound in a small paperback booklet sharing them with a ton of folks.
Thus, when Christmas rolled around after our conversation, Uncle Gerald had a present for each adult family member. Stories – about family we all knew but ones we never fully heard before. We all read ours out loud. Funny ones like a prank my teen-aged mother played on him. And serious ones. He wrote the full story of his solo-pilot jet being shot down during the Korean war. I knew he was in the Korean action and that he flew jets, but I really had not remembered the incident.
Filling the story out with all the gruesomeness of flying in to take out the North Korean machine gun nest and in his youthful desire to complete the mission, went too close – but he achieved his goal! Yet as he turned to head back to the South Korean base –his wingman was reporting to him the damage he could see from his plane. As for my uncle, the smoke was overwhelming his cockpit and he was losing communication and vision of the controls. Waiting as long as he could, he finally had to pop the cover and parachute out – not knowing if he had gone far enough to be over the DMZ (demilitarized zone).
His humor showed through the rest of the events as he recounted floating down to earth seeing a man by a stream apparently washing clothes and being so relieved when he got close enough to see he was wearing a US uniform. The guy had no clue what Uncle Gerald had been through and just glanced up as he landed and said “mornin’, sir” and went back to washing his clothes.
He wrote of his relief at seeing a jeep quickly appearing on the scene and coming to him. But, to his chagrin and proving he was still numb, the guys jumped out and asked if they could have his parachute –they needed it for a dance they were having that night. He just nodded, they piled the parachute in the jeep and drove off. So he started walking toward the base.
Thankfully, another jeep rolled up not long after and it was the assigned uniform directed to collect him. However, his first words were “Stokes, you are in a heap of trouble. Do you know where your plane landed?” Dread replaced relief as the soldier told him it hit the bunker where the Colonel had his lunch every day. Yikes! But thankfully no one was injured. And yes, he did have pictures of the mangled mass of metal – which had no resemblance to a plane.
What a story! What a treasure. What an impact it had on me. And he then was more free to talk about the war and how he felt about it after all these years. We had some good conversations. I was glad to be able to share his story at his funeral in a town that knew him only in his later years.
You KNOW where I am going! OK, you don’t have to join me in the full course to create your Life-Story photobook, but you CAN write just one story. Pick one – whatever you choose – but write it out and if you have a photo or two, add them. And gift it to someone – it can even be AFTER Christmas since you are just now reading this.
And no, it is not acceptable to say nothing that outstanding ever happened to you so you don’t have to write a story. It can be only a few paragraphs, but just choose something and do it. (Want a prompt? How about “how did you get to school?” or “what was your favorite car” or whatever jumps into your mind including current everyday life events or life lessons about which you are passionate, or things that your friends or family don’t know about you.) Act now – don’t lose your impetus.
Share it. Enjoy it. You have just enriched someone’s life – including your own!
May your Christmas season be rich in love and your New Year start off well.
