I Love to Tell the Story
DATELINE: January 1, 2009, in a garage somewhere in northwest Iowa
This is Jennifer Dukes Lee here, reporting for The GDWJ Times, where we “get down” to the facts. That’s me over there: the lady in the press hat, with the Canon in her hand and a sly grin on her face. Convincing, eh?
I ushered in the New Year at a costume party with two doctors, a nurse, a pair of ballet dancers, a rock star, a farmer, Indiana Jones, Andre Agassi and a few other characters.
Elvis left the building early, and was unavailable for comment.
But for some of us, the event was a come-as-you-are affair. My husband — who wanted to be a farmer as a child, then took a detour to law school before returning to the farm in 2002 — came dressed as a farmer. He wore his high school FFA jacket and my grandpa’s old farm overalls.
And me? I came dressed as a caricature of my old self.
Growing up, I wanted to write. Books. News stories. Cheesy poems. Recipes. Anything.
I graduated from Iowa State University, then landed some decent reporting jobs at newspapers in the Midwest.
I covered presidential elections, fires, tornadoes, heroic rescues, jailhouse confessions, the Timothy McVeigh execution, and the state of Iowa’s family farms. It was an exciting and fast-paced life.
So on New Year’s Eve, I went to the party dressed as a reporter. I pinned old press badges to a suit coat, hung official press passes on a lanyard around my neck and went to “get the story” with a notebook in my hand. I found my story in a question that came from “Laura Ingalls.”
The girl in the flannel nightgown and pigtails asked whether I missed my old life. You see, my dream of being a big-city news reporter ended when we moved back to the family farm. No more hob-nobbing with folks at the Capitol. No more front-page bylines.
She asked: “Do you miss it?”
Did I love the pace, the daily news chase, getting the Big Story? Yes, very much so.
Would I rather be a news reporter now — instead of doing what I’m doing as a mom, wife, volunteer? Nope. This life suits me well.
Which leads me to my point. I rather enjoy living in The Now — never looking too far back at what was, and never looking too far ahead at what I think ought to be.
Finding a nice place in the middle seems to make pretty good sense to me.
Even if my stories don’t make front-page news anymore, I rather enjoy telling stories here, with the few who gather here at The GDWJ Times.
As I reflect, it seems like the old song by Katherine Hankey could be my anthem in 2009. For as a child I wanted to tell the story. And today, I still do.
I love to tell the story;
more wonderful it seems
than all the golden fancies of all our golden dreams.
I love to tell the story, it did so much for me;
and that is just the reason I tell it now to thee.
I love to tell the story,
to tell the old, old story
of Jesus and his love.
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