Story Ideas from a Fresh Perspective

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Story Ideas from a Fresh Perspective

By Deb Gallardo

I was remembering recently the day about 18 years ago when my daughter, then about two years old, took an late winter/early spring walk with me. We were bundled up in our winter coats against the damp chill. This was a time of discovery for her.

It was our second such walk. Two weeks earlier everything had seemed pretty much dead or dormant. Snow was just beginning to recede and it had been as though everything were in a state of waiting.

I confess that I had an agenda for this second walk. I wanted to show her all the wonders of spring — all the changes since our first venturing out. There were now crocuses poking their colorful heads up through dried leaves and remnants of snow. Trees were budding or sprouting leaves. Not such a bad agenda, right?

You would have thought so. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

We began by revisiting particular places we had explored several days before. “Look, Bekah, how this tree has changed! And here — flowers are blooming in the middle of the snow!”

I was all ready to take her to the next marvel of nature, when my daughter’s sense of wonder kicked in on its own. She dragged me to and fro exclaiming over what I thought were the most mundane things: a clump of sticky brown leaves with a broken birds egg in it; an unremarkable yellow-brown rock; a stick with green mottling on it, protruding from a stubborn pile of iced-over snow.

In many ways, she is her mother’s daughter, but in this, she was way ahead of me. What she taught ME was that new eyes see everything from a fresh perspective. I kept trying to show her things that amazed me, but in retrospect, I see that she showed me that even the most mundane things amazed her. And that is just as it should be.

We live in an amazing world, and yet it takes a small child’s delight in things we take for granted to re-awaken us to those marvels and everyday miracles.

If you have no small children or toddlers in your life, try to tap into your inner child. Get down on a child’s eye level and examine your home, your yard — in short, anyplace in your environment. And above all, take nothing for granted. Use all your senses and see where they take you. Perception is everything.

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