We Were Storytellers

Words and stories became our teachers long before we stepped foot in a classroom. Stories came long before we knew how to read the words, it is something that is inborn in us, and studies have shown that the earlier a child is read to the greater the impact.

As an author of course stories have a special meaning to me, and as a little girl I always found myself drawn to the stories my Nonna told, of that time when as a little girl of four, a thunderstorm had left her hiding under the bed, clutching her new Blue Patent Leather shoes her parents had gotten her for Church. She was determined to save those shoes, from whatever perceived monster hid in the shadows of a thunderstorm.

There was the story too of her first true love, a tragic love story, of a doctor in training who died of a massive heart attack. She would meet my Grandfather a few years later.

There were the stories I made up while playing with my best friend at the time Johnny, pretending that we were going to drown the devil with a garden hose. We dug deep holes feeling them with muddy water.

I was told that by the age of three I could read, picking a children's book off the shelf and reading it, then I loved Dr Seuss, but in Kindergarten I was diagnosed with Dyslexia which was always more apparent in my writing than in my reading. By Fourth grade I devoured biographies on Martin Luther King Junior, I read The Pinballs, a few years later I'd parallel those to Sister Kate.