Master of Stories

 

My maternal grandfather, Fenton Williams, was a master story teller. He was a school teacher by trade. A father of 4; 3 boys and a girl. A loving husband to my grandma Joanne. An active member in his community of Fair Oaks, California. A religious man who had unwavering faith in Heavenly Father throughout his entire life. He enjoyed homing pigeons and road biking. A favorite pastime of his was releasing his pigeons miles away and then racing home to see who would win. He took great pride in his yard with a beautiful green lawn, an orchard full of olive trees, and fruits and vegetables a plenty. The home was surrounded with beautiful gardens. Azaleas, Roses, Impatiens, Crepe Myrtles, Japanese Maples, brick benches made with his own hands. I spent many years pulling weeds, trimming back the ivy, harvesting the fruits and vegetables, and ridding the cherry trees of the magpies. These are good memories for me that helped shape me into who I am today. But above all else, my grandpa Fenton, would captivate my mind with his stories. Sometimes they were funny and would have us all laughing til we cried. Sometimes they were spiritual and left us thinking about our existence and our own place in this world. His stories carried a variety of messages that we could apply to life when we needed a laugh, or a cry, perhaps some instruction or correction, and more often than not, his stories were just interesting to hear. As I grew older I learned that these wonderful stories were simply journal entries he had made over the years. Experiences from his own life that he found important enough to write down. Perhaps the real treasure of it all, at least for me, was that he wrote in a way that would convey his experiences to others.

I am by no means a master story teller like grandpa Williams, but I have found that I have inherited a little taste of his joy for telling stories and sharing experiences with others. And that is how this blog came to be. Experiences, thoughts, stories, or impressions that are important enough to me to write down in a way that can be read and shared. For anyone reading, I ask that you look beyond the grammatical errors, the run-on sentences, and any other mistakes I make in my writing. I hope you will read with the spirit in which it was written and consider writing your own stories that can be shared with others. I firmly believe that each one of us has unique experiences throughout life that we can either learn from or lose from. I invite you to sample a few of my own concoctions in this pseudo online journal. I hope they will make you laugh, or cry, or cause you to think about your own place in this world, or at the very least, I hope they might be interesting. Cheers