Apples From Heaven – Writing Between the Lines

The Most Noble Story

There was once a widow who had three sons, Alberto, Eduardo, and Ernesto. She had spent a lifetime trying to teach them the meaning of charity and compassion.

The day came when she knew she was dying, and would no longer be there to guide them. She called her sons to her bedside.

“My sons, the only thing of value I have to leave you is my diamond ring. It was given to me by my mother, who had it from her mother, whose mother handed it down to her. It cannot be divided and it must not be sold, for one day, it shall go to one of your daughters. Now I must decide which of you is most worthy of this treasure. Go, my sons, and do good in the world. Come back in one week’s time and tell me your stories. The one who has performed the most noble deed shall inherit the diamond.”

By the time the three young men gathered again at her bedside, their poor mother was near death.

She said to her firstborn, “Alberto, tell me your story.” “Well, Mother,” said the eldest, “after much thought, I gave half of everything I owned to the poor.” “My son,” said the old woman, “no one can tell you that you haven’t performed a good deed. But it is not a noble deed, for have I not taught you that it is everyone’s responsibility to care for the needy?” She said to her secondborn son, “Eduardo, tell me your story.” He said, “Mama, I was passing the river when I saw a small child swept away in the current. I can hardly swim, but I jumped into the water and pulled the child out to safety. It was only by the grace of God that I didn’t drown myself.” “My son, you too have performed a good deed, but not a noble deed. Have I not taught you that everyone should be willing to lay down his life for that of a helpless child?” The old woman said to her youngest son, “Eduardo, come tell me your story.” Ernesto hesitated before taking her hand. “Mamacita,” he confessed, “I haven’t much to tell. As you know, I’ve no earthly goods, and I cannot swim a stroke. But I’ll tell you something that happened to me this week. Very early one morning I was walking in the mountains. I came upon a man sleeping at the edge of a cliff. If he were to stir in his sleep, he would surely fall to his death on the rocks below. I determined to prevent this tragedy. I crept over, so as not to startle him awake. Then I saw that it was my bitter enemy, Juan Miguel. At first, I thought to leave him there, for the last time we met, Juan Miguel threatened to kill me if he ever got the chance. But I knew what I had to do. As I put my arms around him, Juan awoke and I could see the fear in his eyes as he recognized me. “’Don’t be afraid,’ I told him. I quickly rolled him away from the precipice to safety, and helped him to his feet. When Juan Miguel came toward me, I was sure he meant to kill me. But then he threw open his arms to embrace me. Juan said, ‘Last night darkness fell before I could get home. Rather than chance a misstep in the dark, I decided to spend the night where I was. I had no idea I was so close to the cliff edge. You saved my life, Ernesto, and after I treated you so poorly!’ To make a long story short, Mamacita, Juan and I are no longer enemies, but have sworn to be friends forever.” The old woman shed tears of joy. “My son, I have taught you well. That was truly a noble deed, and you are a noble man, for you risked your life to save a man sworn to kill you. With one act of kindness, you have transformed hatred into love and made the world a better place.” With her dying breath she told her sons, “The diamond shall go to Ernesto, but you must all remember that with each noble deed you perform, you shall add to the treasure that awaits you in Heaven.”

All three sons married and had children of their own. They, like their mother, taught their children the meaning of charity and compassion. When the time came, Ernesto left his mother’s diamond to one of his daughters. But Alberto and Eduardo left their children a gem worth as much as any diamond, for their children held in their hearts their grandmother’s precious legacy, the story of the most noble story.

Click here for more interpretations of The Weekly Travel Theme: Enlightenment.

Click here for more interpretations of The Weekly Photo Challenge: Forces of Nature.

NAOMI BALTUCK is a world-traveler and an award-winning writer, photographer, and story-teller whose works of fiction and nonfiction are available through Amazon HERE . She is also a Contributing Editor and Resident Storyteller at The Bardo Group.

A Few of My Favorite Things

Sixteen months ago, I wrote my first blog post. Since then, I’ve met fascinating people, made many friends, and discovered a new form of storytelling. I’m like the Tortoise, not the Hare–slow and steady. Finally, I get to post for the hundredth time!

Through this blog I share my passion for travel, photography, writing, storytelling, and that which I hold dearest, my family. But if not for you, this blog would not exist. There is an Armenian folk saying…

Three apples fell from heaven.

One for the teller,

One for the listener,

And one for the one who took it to heart.

Thank you for being here, for reading, for caring enough to follow this blog, and for sharing your thoughts, your stories, your lives with me through your blogs. To mark this milestone, here are a few of my favorite posts from the past sixteen months.

Sunday Post: Doors

Weekly Photo Challenge: Forward Movement

Oceans (and the Irish Coastline)

Sunrise in Gibraltar

Flowers (are like people)

One Village

Weekly Photo Challenge: Create

To Shorten the Road

Reflections (On Life and the Art of Aging)

Where Are We? Where’s Walter? And Where is That Fleeting Moment?

Editing Monet’s Garden

All words and images c2013 Naomi Baltuck

Steppingstones (and the Kreativ Blogger Award)

On the river of life we look for steppingstones and move forward one step at a time. When the river is raging, sometimes it takes a leap of faith. I thought when I graduated from the University of Michigan with a BA in English, I’d have my path laid out for the rest of my life. Wrong again!

1. My sister Constance and I didn’t know we wanted to do, but we did know where we wanted to do it. We threw our bikes in the back of a drive-away pickup truck and headed Out West to seek our fortunes.

Biking down the Washington and Oregon Coast was an adventure. We were drenched much of the time–“rain forest” printed on a map doesn’t mean much to a Detroiter until she actually gets wet. Once we built up calluses in all the right places, we covered our miles, laughed a lot, met many kind people along the way, and filled up our story banks.

…until I was struck by a hit-and-run driver.

2. I was banged up, but not as badly as my poor bike. Just like with my birdwatching adventure on Mt. St. Helens, I’d never have wished it to happen. But if it hadn’t, I wouldn’t have stumbled upon the opportunity to teach “Eastern Canoeing” at Montecito-Sequoia High Sierra Camp for Girls in King’s Canyon National Park. My best friends there were Twinkle, Sneakers, Scoop, and Aspen. But that’s a story for another day.

3. Camp ended, and I determined to make a fresh start in Seattle. My first job was with Northwest Airlines as a reservation agent. I would earn more than ever, plus free airline travel! I felt like a VIP when they flew me to Minneapolis for my interview. Then the training began. That job lasted three days. They sat me in a huge hall with all the other trainees lined up in row after row of desks, opposite a wall of blinking lights. Each light represented an agent whose every call was recorded. Every second was accounted for—how many calls, even how many seconds per call. I didn’t even look before I leaped!

4. I took a job as a plumbing radio dispatcher, plotting the course for eight plumbing crews throughout the city of Seattle. “KYL 97 to 88, we have a clogged toilet in Wallingford…” I couldn’t help myself—it took me a while to figure out that my boss had a radio in his car too, and I kept getting chided for dramatic communications (think “Enterprise to Bob, red alert! We have a sewer backing up in Federal Way…or my favorite,”Captain Kirk out…”). My boss said he never expected me to last as long as I did—I quit after eight weeks. The next steppingstone took me all the way to….

5. …Wyoming. There I waited on tables at the Chuckwagon Restaurant at Colter Bay in Grand Teton National Park.

It was a grand summer in the most beautiful place on earth.

I could never remember whether to serve from the left or the right, but I could spin a yarn. I’d already been to 49 states, and had something in common with everyone who sat in my section, wherever they hailed from. They loved the customized sketches I drew for them on the back of their checks. I hiked, camped, biked, canoed, and filled up my story banks with each cup of coffee I poured coffee for the local cowboys, park rangers, and tourists. From tips alone I earned more than I could have working for Northwest Airlines…

…but being the best waitress in the world wasn’t enough to hold me. I was looking for something more, although I didn’t know what. As soon as the tourist season ended, I grabbed my jackalope and took another flying leap. Strong currents and prevailing winds always carried me back to Seattle.

6. I took a job teaching at Community Day School. I loved working with kids so much. I didn’t think of myself as a storyteller, although our Book Nook was a very popular place for reading and storytelling. I stuck around CDS as head teacher, helping to establish their first summer camp program. I was able to apply all I had learned at Montecito-Sequoia and the other camp where I was a counselor, the Bar 717 Ranch.

I took a puppetry class to enrich my teaching, but I was invited by our instructors, master puppeteers, Jean Matson and Betsy Tobin, to join the Seattle Puppetory Theater. I am still grateful to them both for recognizing and helping me develop talents I might never have known what to do with. Puppetry was my steppingstone, and my toe in the door to the performance arts as well as writing. I co-wrote some of the material I performed. The piece I was proudest and most passionate about co-writing and producing was commissioned by Physicians Against Nuclear Weapons, a play for adults called Peace Porridge Hot. It was exhilarating, whether I was behind the curtain manipulating puppets or in front of the stage, interacting with them. My favorite role was Yo-Yo the Clown.

7. I retired from puppetry and teaching in 1985, but they were my steppingstones to a career as a full-time professional storyteller. Discovering storytelling was a little like falling in love. It was as though I had come to a bend in the river, and I could look up and see which direction to follow all the way to the horizon. For three decades I’ve been telling stories at libraries, schools, museums, festivals. When the kids were old enough, they joined me on the stage for tandem telling. My husband Thom is a teacher librarian and a great storyteller. When he jumped into the act, we began telling as the Baltuck/Garrard Family Storytellers. I still teach storytelling and do most of my performances solo, but my favorite gigs involve the whole family.

Even if you know where you’re going, you still have to put one foot in front of the other if you want to keep learning and growing, personally and/ or professionally. I believe there are many ways to tell a story. Storytelling led to writing. First I adapted traditional folk tales, then began with original short stories. That led to storytelling publications, including an award-winning anthology, Apples From Heaven, that I am very proud of. Then came my first novel, co-written with my sister Deborah, The Keeper of the Crystal Spring, a Doubleday Book-of-the-Month-Club selection. Eventually I found my way to writing this blog, which has opened up a whole new way of storytelling, and introduced me to blogging friends all over the world. Where to from here? I will keep the keyboard clacking and the feet moving one step at a time, and see where I end up.

Now there was a point to this story. I was nominated for the Kreativ Blogger Award by Holly Michaels, a writer and a storyteller, a traveler and a mom. Thank you, Holly Michael, for this honor. Check out her inspiring blog, Holly Michael’s Writing Straight.

Now that I’ve already told you seven (or eight or nine facts about myself), I get to recommend seven other bloggers for this award, and I hope you will check them out because they have so many stories to tell! I have made so many wonderful blogging buddies and I have a backlog of awards to pass on, so if you did’t receive a nomination for this one, I’m sure you will for the next one!

Honesty is a blog written by a writer, a teacher, a nurse. She writes what she thinks, which is refreshing. She is also looking for writers who are interested in sharing stories on her blog.

Scillagrace is written by someone who loves history and dancing as much as I do, and she spins a good yarn. I love her voice.

The Teatime Reader is another Naomi who writes intelligent and interesting book reviews. She always chooses intriguing books and my reading list is a mile long since I discovered her wonderful blog!

Seventh Voice is an important blog that addresses Autism and Asperger’s through poetry and prose, but more than that, it is about being human.

P ART ICI PATIO N is a blog by Dorotee Lang, who shares photographs of the world as a part of her daily journal. I really like her work.

Sofacents: From Adman to Diaperman follows the adventures of a 46 year old stay-at-home Dad. It is fresh and funny, and I love the pictures.

Joy in the Moments is written by Char, a wife, a mother, a writer, and a reader who believes life should be lived for joy It’s a joy to read her blog.

Check ’em out!