Always the Stories

The room is buzzing. The energy in the air is palpable. It always shocks me, this picture I see. Forty junior high students fill my classroom. The bell has already rung to end the school day, but they are here for Power of the Pen, the writing team I coach. I marvel every year with the other coach; over two-thirds of our junior high turn out to tell stories after school. Teens have a lot of angst and a lot to say. It is a safe outlet for them to live out their dreams and nightmares through the characters they create. But I still marvel.

And this year there is another side story. My daughter, age seven and full of stories herself, is a de facto member of this team. But I didn’t really realize how much she understood or enjoyed story telling until this week. While I was busy explaining the machinations and inner workings of our club, she polished off her spelling homework so she could get to work on her own stories. I joke that she loves math too much, and has a mind like a naturalist, but apparently she has picked up a few things in the realm of verbal expression as well. She just needs a little more practice with that spelling!

Story one:
I am a aorfin my nam is kara.
I liv in a aofanij I am paor I war rags.
I et drt
I clen
I dot like it!
I got a doptdid I wish my paris wil come back.

Story two:
I am a indein
I liv on a i lid
I liek to clim on thes cocanoos
I love the wotr
Im a good sooimer
I like to drik coknoot melk

I love how language develops. I have been awed as my babies each in their turn made sense of nouns, then verbs, and adjectives and adverbs too. Words fly through the air first as mere repetitions, and then with life and breath of their own. I am amazed by what I do not understand: like synapses linking and thoughts developing. Children understand so much more than they can say. They know innately about character. They understand conflict and longing and the magic of happily ever after too. They can put together a story filled with suspense and drama long before they have the motor skills to do so.

But I feel bad for the legacy of our English language that stymies young writers like my daughter. I am almost jealous of the simple Spanish conjugations and spelling rules that make sense in other languages. I can’t remember a time that I didn’t know the difference between wear, where and were. Or the double consonants on words like will or the world of silent e’s at the end of words. But for a fledgling writer, the rules are cumbersome and awkward, the exceptions that prove the rule too widespread.

But the stories remain. Whether simple stories of Indians and orphans penned by my daughter with slanting lines and misshapen spelling, or more mature prose recounted by teens and egos forging a place in the world, the stories last. And that is what matters.