Determining who and what kind of a creature we are is a developmental task every individual must complete.  Maturity comes with experience and aquisition of information leading to understanding and skill building.  It comes gradually by living through a relatively long childhood.  The nature of experiences and quality and reliability of information collected by an individual during formative years play a part in determining how successfully the emerging adult will fit into a cultural setting. Old age, for those of us fortunate enough to make it to that stage of life, is a satisfying time of reminiscence, reflection, and sharing. Son David and I spent most of last week with members of our extended family, so we shared a time of remembering with my older sister and my younger brother. We told each other our stories.  Mostly, our recollections were similar; but we were reminded by the differences in our stories that inevitably family lore is an amalgam of many different ways of thinking about what actually happened.  It was great to reminisce with my sister about our childhoods.  She has always been for me a spirit of strength... someone usually not physically present in my adult life but a powerful strengthening force nevertheless.  She is ten years older than I am.  During all the years of my childhood she was a consistent, kind, strong, protecting presence.  

Fairy tales and myths are powerful shapers of culture. I had thought when I began this journal writing that I’d explore the importance of myth, not just for the larger society but also for the families and individuals who share a culture.  I reread two of the Grimm Brothers’ stories this week, those with Rumpelstilzchen and Rapunzel as the major characters, and recognized in them the power of myth in the shaping of family.  That’s what I was going to write about today, but I’ll put it off for another time.