Story Worthy

For Father’s Day this year, I gave my dad a subscription to StoryWorth. Each week he’ll receive a writing prompt to inspire him to write down stories from his life. At the end of the year, all the stories will be printed in book form. This week I learned that since his family never went on long vacations as a child, he wanted to make sure that his own kids experienced that. And we did. Annual camping trips to New Mexico and road trips to both coasts, including Disneyland, were a big part of my childhood summers. We also took trips, like he did, to see family, most notably our trips to Arkansas to visit my grandparents. Here’s a repost from 2011 inspired by those trips.

 When my grandparents lived in Arkansas, we used to make the six hour road trip to visit two or three times a year. Our rewards for that much time in a car were afternoons spent listening to my grandmother's stories, a bag of Snickers in the produce drawer, and a coffee table stacked with magazines. My mom and I would settle in on the sofas catching up on Hollywood gossip and the latest his side/her side drama of the advice columns.

My fascination, some might say morbid curiosity, with marriage (troubled or not) led me to pick up a new novel by Carol Edgarian. In Three Stages of Amazement, we are thrown into the marriage of Lena and Charlie. And from the first paragraph, we are almost certain this marriage can't be saved. His failing startup, a baby with medical issues, and an ex-boyfriend (Italian ex-boyfriend) are but some of the factors pulling their relationship asunder.

The others? Well, you'd be amazed. And you might need a Snickers to get you through it all.