Ida Ghramm
Stories (2)
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The "other" ending
Dad had a storytelling voice that I can still hear, the words sounding rich and full and within each word I could see the other worlds he was reading about. I could sense disappointment, fear, and adventure. Dad’s voice captured the soul of the story and drew me into the worlds of Brer Rabbit, Uncle Wiggily the rabbit gentleman, and every witch, villain, and princess from the Brothers Grimm. However, the best story dad read was The Little Mermaid by Hans Christian Andersen. It was dad’s reading of the “Great Dane’s” stories that made me believe the book jacket that claimed Andersen to be “the world’s greatest storyteller.” When I demanded stories from the book, dad insisted on reading from beginning to end, one story per day, so it was days of agonizing anticipation before he reached the last one, and my favorite. It is still my favorite today, but not Disney’s animated version. It might be strange that I prefer the more somber, slightly depressing version of this tale, because what little girl doesn’t want to hear about princesses finding their one true love and getting a happily ever after. But by age 5, I was already painfully aware that for most, there was no ONE true love, and happily ever after existed only in stories, but it wasn’t the ultimate ending for all fairy tales. For many storytellers of the past, their tales of love had a simultaneous ending of violent retribution at the hands of the wronged. Sleeping Beauty and Snow White come to mind, such sweet, presumably gentle young women who allowed their nemesis to die gruesome deaths for the wrongs they had committed.
By Ida Ghramm5 years ago in Families
The Heat
Penny clutched the locket in her hand and stared at the scene before them. Even while living in one of the city’s tree-lined communities she had thought it was ugly but now it was nothing but a cracked, dead world. The Heat had altered the city landscape into something almost unrecognizable and the young woman was hesitant to venture into the alien territory.
By Ida Ghramm5 years ago in Fiction
