Elizabeth and the Cinnamon Buns

Just as I used to tell my son Peter the Pirate stories. I also used to tell my daughter Elizabeth Cottage Stories. This is a story I told her many times although it changed and changed with every telling until it emerged in its final form. I have forgotten many of the stories but they all began the same way, “Once upon a time there was a little girl who lived in a cottage on the edge of a meadow…” and so forth with a very long string of prepositional phrases that she didn’t seem to mind too much. The vocabulary was a reach for a girl of four, five, six, seven and for however long I would tell them, but then she has an excellent vocabulary to this day and I cannot help but attribute that to a love of words and a love of stories for all the years of telling them to her.



The stories are told with a slow steady pace as if there were all the time in the world to tell it. After all, what is the use of a story if the real reason is not just to be close, to spend a good deal of time together, and to enjoy the comfort of loving and being loved?