Stories

  There are times when doing school with my brothers is one of my greatest joys and simultaneously a pain. Recently, I have been teaching my younger brother James how to write stories. Of course, since he is only seven, I am just having make up stories and then write them down in a semi-logical fashion. My main goal was to get him to practice his hand writing and use his imagination. James is a pretty good student, but he is more often then not rather unenthusiastic about reading and writing.

  Ever since I have started getting him to write stories, however, James loves to do school. He will bring me his notebook in the evenings and ask if we can write another story. I am thrilled with his newfound love of writing. At the same time, I do not particularly enjoy sitting down for an hour and a half telling him how to spell 'raced' and 'tree' and 'climbed' and jumped'. At the end of his stories I thoroughly anticipate 'the end'.

  That is the pain, but it is only a small one when compared to the joy I get from teaching my brother to write. James now has a genuine love of writing. If he keeps that love, if he nourishes it and lets it grow, who knows what could happen. Maybe he will be a great writer one day. Or he might be like me, scribbling thoughts in journals and on fluttering scraps of paper. I hope his love will grow, and that I will have the patience to water it and to wait.