Lindsay Eland - Middle Grade Author

About two years ago, I took out the movie disc “Cars” from its case and slipped it into the DVD player. My son, Isaac, still thrilled with the movie even after seeing it over thirty times, wiggled on the couch and said in a tone brimming over with excitement, “Mama, I wonder if Lightening McQueen will win the race this time?”  

I stood there stunned for a moment, wondering if he was making a joke, and obviously smirking to myself because my little boy is so stinking cute. But his face, intent on the screen, wasn’t joking. It was a face enthralled and filled up with the element of suspense and possibility.

After seeing the same scenes, hearing the same dialogue, laughing at the same parts thirty times before, he still felt as if “maybe, just maybe, things will be different this time.”

The possibility was there for him.

And our lives are kind of like those DVD’s…or at least the things that have already happened are. We can’t erase are yesterdays, we can’t change them, we can’t wish or hope or dream them away. They are there, written, and burned forever. They won’t ever change.

And that’s okay. Cause that’s what makes our lives happy, and sad, thrilling, and boring, painful, and inspiring, and ultimately beautiful.

But unlike a DVD, the story doesn’t end there, does it? Cause our life isn’t over yet…the DVD isn’t finished playing. There is still time for the possibility of happiness, and sadness, thrills, and yawns, pain, and inspiration. Possibilities.

And that thought, to me, is so wonderful, cause it is filled up to the top with hope.

My daughter Ella Jane, is a pack-rat. Ever since she was little, she gathered trinkets, broken things, sticks, fuzz, and disgusting though it is…even hair she’d cut from her dolls. 

Up in her bunk bed, which is her own little once upon a time world, she stores these things like a little squirrel. And though it is so not cute during the few times a year a get the “I must clean everything or I will go insane” urge…most of the time, I love it.

And when I think about her, storing things up and away just for herself, I wonder if she will be a writer or a storyteller when she gets older.

Cause that’s what writers do…collect incidents, and conversations, observations, names, and occupations. We find ways to use a funny story or a sad one, a silly name, an article on the worlds largest collection of toenails, a song, or a tune. We store them all away in ourselves and save them for that moment when they’re ready to come out and tell their story.

That is, if we are willing to listen. 

So maybe it is not so much the storing away that makes a difference, but rather the listening.

And as we find in friendships, relationships, and in all of life…listening to another person: their frustrations, their accomplishments, their hurt, their joy, their misunderstanding, their anger, their voice…can make all the difference in the world.

And so, to those who are reading this, thank you for listening to me even though I may not always make sense, or I may repeat myself, or you may disagree with me.

It’s always nice to know someone is listening.

Once upon a time there was a husband and wife just starting to build their family. They had three girls one after the other and really very fast. so fast that people thought they were impractical and that their way of having a family just didn’t make sense.

But they didn’t care cause they were very happy all together in a small little house just big enough for them, a black and white cat, and her three babies.

But even though they were very happy they didn’t have much money to buy things like food or clothes. 

“You need to get a job,” people said. “Selling cars, or painting houses, or something practical like that.” 

But the man had a dream to one day become a dentist and help people smile bigger and wider and more proud at the world.

This meant that the man had to go back to school. 

That meant the wife had to find a way of making money on the side, and the man had to have other jobs to pay for the potatoes they ate for dinner each night.

Many people told the man and wife that they needed to be practical. That going back to school was not a good idea. That having two jobs was useless, that his dream—their dream—just didn’t make sense.  

            But the man didn’t care.   

            And after he finished his school he became a dentist. He helped people to smile wider and bigger and prouder at the world.

            And all the while he and his wife asked his three beautiful girls, “What do you dream of being when you are older?”

            And maybe the girls said, “Princesses.”

            And that isn’t practical, is it? And really, it doesn’t make sense. Honestly, it’s just plain silly.

            But the man and wife never told them that.

            Instead they said, “You can be and do whatever you want to.”

            And so the girls dreamed of being singers, and ballerinas, and dental hygienists, and actors, and artists, and hair stylists, and writers.

            And never once did they think that they couldn’t do it.

            Never once.

            Some people thought their dreams were unpractical, or useless, or just plain silly.

            But still they dreamed.

            And what people they became.

            Writers, singers, artists, hair stylists, writers, mothers, wives.

            And still they are not afraid to dream.

            Most dreams aren’t practical and more often then not, they don’t make sense.

            But life really isn’t meant to be practical is it? And it definitely does not make sense most of the time.

            And I hope that when my children think of my husband and I’s life, as I think of my own parents life, they won’t say, “It was practical” or that “It made sense.” But that they’ll know that each day, we are trying to live and that each day we continue to dream.