The Stories of Our Lives - Barbara Jean Hicks

from the life and times
of educator and children's author
Barbara Jean Hicks

"Home is where our story begins." So reads the sign on the wall above my computer desk. The sign was a gift, a number of years ago, from one of my sisters. It has held a place of honor in my home ever since, and it holds special meaning now, as I've returned to my hometown to help care for my elderly mother.

Although I never lived in this house my father had built for my mother as they aged--so she wouldn't have to climb stairs to a second story bedroom--I visited them often here, and easily settled in after my dad died and my mom moved into assisted living.

Mom went into the hospital with congestive heart failure six weeks ago. My six siblings converged on Mom's little house and stayed for a week, visiting her every day and waiting to hear a prognosis. Mom gave us the prognosis herself after the doctor explained her options, stating in a voice as loud and clear as I've ever heard her use, "I want to live!" It was a joyous cry, not a desperate one. Her condition has been touch and go since then, with release to a skilled nursing facility, a second rush to the hospital and then back to the nursing home again. And now it looks like she'll be able to return to her assisted living home sometime next week. Yes!

I visit Mom often, carving important time out of days busy with teaching, writing, keeping up with the daily tasks of living, getting ready for a big move, and hosting family members who come when they can. And what I understand more and more as I visit with her and my siblings is the truth of that sign above my desk. My story begins here, in a place where shopkeepers still remember me and my family from the time we were new in town; where nine of us once burst the seams of a two-bedroom house; where I grew up a middle child, walked to school in the rain, sang in the choir at the First Baptist Church. Where each of us had our own unique take on life and grew into very different people, yet are still, now, much alike at our core.

My story begins in a town where my mom, today, remembered a time that one of the kids fell out of a tree and she rushed him to the hospital, and coming home, found another of her children asleep on the sidewalk in front of the house; found that the neighbor boy who had promised to watch the other kids had not followed through; found that sometimes the best she could do as a mother did not feel as if it were enough.

Stories! My mother has them. My siblings have them. I have them. Our lives are stories knit together through, and by, time. And home is where our stories--our story, the story that defines us--begins. Home, especially our family home, the home where we grew up, is where we find the subject matter--and more importantly the themes--that permeate our written work.

Think about it. What family stories do you, your parents and your siblings remember? What is still important to all of you or to each of you after all these years? What themes persist? In what ways do you relate to each of your family members? How do you perceive each other? There is the raw material that has gone into your written work. There is the raw material for your next work. Rich veins to mine!