Searching for Stories

When I dreamed of having a cyber-space to call my own, I thought that I would write on my blog spot all the time. While I had a desk job and checked the internet hourly, I had all these great ideas (and time) to write...but I just never committed to the web. When I finally signed on, somehow I thought life would be like that again. Boy was I wrong! Not only do I not have any time (or the time I do have, I'm crashed on the couch), but I feel like I have few ideas to share with you. My deep insights seem to consist of how much I HATE getting up before the sun everyday or whether or not I can survive without a break for 6 weeks until March 10 (our February Inservice Day was taken away by an ice day in December and this wickedly warm weather leaves no snow day chances in sight!). I feel like my life is too boring right now to write much. Do you really want to know about the new writing time I am trying out on my kids or how I'm going to squeeze in 15 minutes of Reading Remediation during my scheduled Science/Social Studies classes? I could tell you fun stories about my first Friday the 13th as a teacher again....the overly ADHD boy I have in my class who purposely kicked his shoe off but accidentally sent it into the woods on the other side of the playground fence in the brush and mud...but I don't really want to relive it again.
Working on this new writing process time with my kids, I needed to bring in an item that they could interview me about in order to start a story that they could "watch" me write. I struggled to find an object that represented anything recent in my life. Pictures of our new furniture (the first of our 6 years of marriage - well, not counting the beautiful coffee table our friends helped us buy the first year)? Nah, that's boring to them and me. My ski jacket to represent our recent ski trip? While fun for me, not much to share right now. Then I realized, the one story that is still bottled up inside of me, waiting to come out, would be represented by one picture that I keep in my Bible and stumble across about once a month. It's a picture of Kyle Lake pretending to heal his brother-in-law Scott in the entry way of UBC during Chris' senior year of college - 1999. Kyle is trying to make the picture look serious, and Scott is hiding a grin, and I feel Kyle standing there every time I look at it. It takes my breath away, and I usually fight some tears. But somehow, I'm still not ready to write that story down yet, and I definitely can't share it with my kids. I am learning to love them, but I'm not that close to them.
It's funny how powerful words and stories can be. In something like a "blog" or the internet, there is a sort of freedom that comes from writing to an unknown audience. But working over a possible story in my head to a real audience, even a young one like my students, I realize my pain is still too fresh for confrontation.
I recently read several blog spots of others who are somehow dealing with Kyle's death more fresh this month than last. Maybe winter has more purpose than snow days and hibernation. Maybe its lack of joyful flowers and singing birds brings a sort of calm and quiet that forces us to confront our internal thoughts. I can't say, but either way, someday I'll have a story to write...that I will need to share. I'm glad you'll be around to read it.