Found Treasures and New Beginnings

As I begin a new year of teaching writing and launching Writing Workshop with my class, I am drawn to bits and pieces of our lives that might spark that great small moment, that one story just waiting to unfold, layer by layer, until it blossoms into something special. The objects and photos I asked my students to bring in the first week of school are filling their handmade heartboxes and heartbags. Anxiously they are waiting to share what they have collected. The memories the objects hold are tugging at their heartstrings. They appear to be patient with the process of when and how we will share these, but I know that they are merely being 'first week of school' respectful children listening to their new teacher babble on about schedules and expectations for the year. I am sure they must be wondering...'when will we get a chance to show these treasures we have collected?" What they do not realize is that I share in their frustration, because I am just as impatient as they are to move on with the process and get started with allowing some of these memories to fill the pages of their writer's notebooks.
So it was that I came across these objects, looking for something I would model for my students. As I sorted through hundreds of photos of my grandparents, and even my great grandparents, I spotted this one old photo of my grandfather, taken in his younger days when he was dating my grandmother. On the back of the photo, my grandmother, years later, had written the following:
"I was a silly girl the year Dad(as she referred to him) drove into town in a buggy and met me at the corner of Main and Bridge - when I first met him - I was so embarrassed." It struck me so that my grandmother had, in so few words, told so much. She loved to write, however, she never thought of herself as a writer. In one of her letters I read, she had mentioned how she was going to go to the library and see if she could find some books on how to write. What she didn't realize was that she always was a writer. She was quite a good writer. She wrote all the time and she wrote from the heart and isn't that what good writer's do.