When I was one
year old, my mother and I flew from Israel to the United States because her
father, my grandfather whom I never met, had just died. My father stayed behind,
and our stay in Florida, which was supposed to be short, lasted nine months.
It would be a foreshadowing
of my parents eventual divorce, when I was seven. But for a time, it was an
extended separation.
When we left, I spoke
in two-word sentences in Hebrew. When we returned, I spoke fluently, and in
English, a language my father barely knew. But my father understood the very
first thing I said to him when he greeted us at the port of Haifa, where our
ship had docked. He told me about this meeting many times. He said I looked at
him, took his hand and said, “Daddy, tell
me a story.”
I forgot whatever
English I knew not long after. I would learn it (or re-learn) some years later
in school, as a second language. But I knew this sentence because in re-telling
my father always said it in English.
Tell
me a story. No matter what or where, no matter how or whom. There are always the stories and the storytellers who tell them.
📚~Keep telling stories~📚
