All About the Story ....

My 11 year old charge was sitting in the back seat of my convertible with the wind in his hair (because he and his little sis like the top down) and he piped up, "You know we have all those facts and stuff on the Internet, Karen?"

"Uh ..." not sure if I was supposed to offer a reply I went with keeping the conversation open for him to feed into it, "Why don't you tell me?"

"So that we can pass the stories down from one generation to the next; the way it's always been," he practically beamed at how pleased he was with that answer.

Another storyteller, I thought. Gotta love it.

At least I do. I tell folks all the time that it's all about the story. When my friend Larry took me on a 40 mile hike for his 40th birthday, I reminded him and me along the way when I was breathing hard or his buddies weren't keeping the pace he wanted that we'd have stories to tell. And we do!

Last night I spent a wonderful evening with three incredible women -- two of whom owned the fantastically modern house with such clean lines an architect would salivate just to see it -- and they were explaining how they had come to see the stories that were behind every one of the estimated 10,000 decisions they had had to make in the building of it made the living there that much richer.

I marveled at how two people could be so thoughtful. From the ramps for the dachsunds that are prone to back problems to have free reign of the first floor to the mud room to the elevator that goes directly to one of their mom's wing of the house to space that was designed for entertaining, this house speaks to looking outside one's own self and to the needs/wants of others.

I imagined walking through the house in a few years and hearing the stories upon stories that would be added. I've already fashioned a few of my own there.

Of course, the best part of storytelling is when the moment the great aha comes.

I see the next few days as prep for one of the biggest ahas of my life. What stories I will tell! Hope to see lots of you here in this space.

For direct contact, I'm going to be at kccomm@hotmail.com.