I am pleased to share this guest post by Dana Hanley. Dana writes about faith, family, and particularly education at Principled Discovery. I encourage you to subscribe to her posts. They are always thought-provoking.

We have been listening to “On the Banks of Plum Creek” by Laura Ingalls Wilder. It is amazing to listen to her account of her childhood. Her family had so little…a rag doll and some paper dolls Ma had cut out of old papers were prized treasures. And yet they were so joyful.

Laura’s description of evenings of laughter and dance while Pa played his fiddle evoke a sense of longing for a simpler life in a simpler time. Her tales of running along the creek, chasing fish and pestering crabs cause the reader to pause and reflect on one’s own childhood.

Despite living in conditions most of us today would consider “hardship,” Laura provides such a vivid and loving account of her childhood that over 100 years later we can laugh at the antics of this little brown-haired girl of the frontier. Hours in front of the television watching the latest movie and playing the latest video game will hardly make such a lasting impression on this and future generations.

What memories will our children have?

I’m hoping mine will remember my husband taking time to read to them from “The Bible Story” by Maxwell before going to bed when he returns from a trip. And the post cards he sends them, and the letters they write to include in his lunch box.

I hope they remember breaking open the honeysuckles to get to the sweet nectar inside, and gathering wild plums by the creek north of town.

I hope they remember hiking down the creek at the dog run, balancing across the tree that fell over it, and the time that we all fell in and had to get in the car wet and muddy.

I hope they remember praying and talking and reading about God.

I hope my daughter remembers her excitement at her first “real” Bible.

I hope they remember popping popcorn and mixing it with M&Ms for an occasional family movie.

I hope they will someday sit in front of the fireplace with their grandchildren and have one or two tales from their childhood to share. Maybe even a few that their grandchildren request to hear again and again at every family gathering.

Storytelling seems to be a lost art in our current generation, but maybe that is because children have so little time to build memories worthy of repeating. Perhaps our children need more time when the most interesting thing to do is aggravate an old crab on the banks of Plum Creek.

Published in The Gift Of Family Writing by Jill Novak.