Why the Little Things Stay With Us

Small stories. Small moments. Small actions that reverberate through the years, often in ways we never fully realise at the time.

My own writing life — if one can call it that — began in the fourth grade, with a teacher named Mrs. Drew. I do not recall her first name, if I ever knew it at all. Back then, adults were simply Mr., Mrs., or Miss, and that seemed sufficient. (You need not bother doing the arithmetic — I am seventy-six.)

One afternoon near the end of the school day, Mrs. Drew propped a landscape painting against the blackboard for all of us to see. Our assignment was simple enough — write a short story inspired by the scene in the painting. It showed a family in a wagon, travelling along a dirt road that wound through woods and farmland, headed somewhere beyond the frame.

We began writing in class and were sent home to finish. A few days later, Mrs. Drew returned our papers, handing them back one by one. All except mine. Mine, she kept.

When she finally explained why, it was because she intended to read it aloud to the class. And when I eventually received it back, there at the top of the page were words I have never forgotten:

“A++      Jim — You will be a writer someday.”

I was painfully shy at the time. I did not know what to do with such encouragement. But I carried it with me — quietly, steadily — for the rest of my life.

There are moments like that — small at the time, almost unnoticed — that stay with us long after louder things have passed. They do not announce themselves. They do not demand attention. And yet, years later, they are often the ones we remember most clearly.

Perhaps it is because they arrive without agenda. Or because they involve people rather than events. Or because they ask nothing of us except that we notice.

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