Art Gallery of Multimedia-Storyteller.com, Sarah Poff

05/27/2026

The Shoes in the Back of the Closet
By Sarah Poff
This afternoon at G-Ma Camp began with costumes.�Not expensive costumes. Not store-bought magic.
Just racks of old dresses, storytelling outfits, faded memories stitched into fabric… and two older elementary-aged girls ready to become whoever their imagination allowed them to be.
We had turned the shop into a little world of make-believe this summer. I had hung up a costume rack filled with dresses from my storytelling days and clothing from years long past. Around the program project tubs, I draped plastic tablecloths that looked like old stone walls, and nearby sat pewter dishes and odds and ends that have somehow survived the passing of time right along with me.
The girls slipped into the dresses with the seriousness only children can give to play.�And then suddenly they stopped.�“G-Ma… how about dress shoes?”
Oh my.�So we headed to the little room with what I call the Family Ladies’ Legacy cabinet.�Every family probably has one, even if it isn’t officially called that.�A place where women quietly leave behind pieces of themselves.�Not always jewelry or fine china.�Sometimes it’s aprons.�Handbags.�Scarves.�Buttons in old jars.�A Sunday hat.�Or a pair of shoes tucked in the back corner of a closet.
I pointed the girls toward two pairs of high heels on top of the cabinet.
One pair was mine — bright red pointed-toe shoes from the mid-1980s, back before their mother was even born. I smiled seeing them again because Lord knows I was never very good in high heels. I may have looked decent standing still, but walking in them was another story entirely.
The other pair belonged to their great-grandmother Maxine.
Now Maxine… she was elegant.
She understood how to put herself together in a way some women simply know instinctively. Her golden-brown heels still carried that quiet dignity about them, even all these years later.
The girls carefully slipped their feet into those shoes.
One pair barely fit the older granddaughter.�The other pair was long; however, the younger granddaughter made them work. She is easygoing in that way.
And then they waddled back out to the shop in white and gray socks, teetering and giggling, holding onto chairs and tables as if they had suddenly stepped into womanhood itself.
And for just a moment… time folded.
There stood my granddaughters in the shoes of women who came before them.
Women they never fully knew.
Women who cooked meals, raised babies, worried over bills, buried loved ones, taught school, ironed dresses, put on lipstick, laughed with girlfriends, cried quietly at night, and somehow kept moving forward through all the ordinary and difficult days of life.
Those shoes once walked hospital hallways, grocery aisles, church foyers, school programs, and family gatherings.
They walked through decades that are now only photographs and stories.
And there they were again…
walking across my shop floor in the summer of 2026.
The older granddaughter — now as tall as me — slipped beautifully into my old high school and college clothes. The younger one worked hard making adaptations, pinning and tugging and pretending. She is adaptable when presented with a problem.
And naturally… I was assigned the role of peasant woman.
Though I did negotiate for the cushy chair.
Hours later the dresses were draped across chairs, the shoes kicked aside, and the girls went home tired and happy.
Now the house is quiet.
The costumes are hanging still once more.�The pewter dishes sit untouched.�And those old high heels are back on the top of the cabinet.
They will probably never again walk across a dance floor or down a church aisle.
But today they walked again.
Not just across the floor…
but across generations.
And tonight I find myself wondering how many women have quietly stored away a piece of their past in the back of our closets.
How many dresses still hold laughter in their seams.�How many pairs of shoes still remember the shape of the feet that wore them.�How many little girls are searching through those closets, trying on not just clothing… but identity.
Trying to understand what it means to someday become a woman.
Perhaps that is why afternoons like this matter so much.
Because somewhere between the costumes and the high heels, the giggling and the pretending, girls begin gathering pieces of the women they may someday become.
And maybe the greatest inheritance we leave behind is not the jewelry or the furniture or even the family photographs.
Maybe it is simply this:�That the women who come after us will know they belong to something larger than themselves.�A long line of women who loved deeply, sacrificed quietly, carried on bravely…�…and left enough of themselves behind that future girls could step into their shoes and keep walking forward.
The shoes carried decades of memories.�The white and gray socks reminded me that childhood was still holding on.

05/23/2026

French Traders, Spanish Trails & One Plastic Crocodile

There’s something about the Mississippi River that still whispers.

Not the loud kind of whisper… but the kind that drifts through the trees at dusk and curls across the water like fog. The kind that makes you feel as if somewhere just around the bend, a French trader is pulling his canoe onto shore… a Spanish flag is flapping in the distance… and history is still alive if you slow down long enough to listen.

That’s exactly where Sarie and I found ourselves.

Now mind you, Sarie is no ordinary traveling companion. She’s a plastic crocodile with a camera around her neck and more curiosity than common sense. But somehow that little green sidekick has a way of making every adventure feel possible.

So there we were… paddling our canoe through the waters that once carried trappers, traders, explorers, dreamers, and weary travelers heading into the unknown.

The river was their highway.

Long before asphalt roads and GPS voices telling us where to turn, these muddy waters carried stories north and south through the heart of America. French voyageurs paddled for hours with packs of furs stacked high in their boats. Spanish traders carried goods from settlement to settlement. Some came searching for fortune. Others came simply trying to survive another season on the frontier.

And if you listen carefully enough… you can almost hear them.

The dip of wooden paddles.
The call across the water.
The creak of a riverside trading post.
The laughter around a nighttime fire.

That’s the thing about history—it isn’t dead at all.

It waits for us.

Sometimes it waits in museums.
Sometimes in old photographs.
And sometimes… it waits in the middle of a cartoon canoe with a woman in a spotted hat and a plastic crocodile named Sarie.

I think that’s why I love storytelling so much. For just a little while, we stop being spectators looking at history from the shore. We climb into the canoe ourselves.

And honestly?

I wish you could have been there with us that day.

You would have loved the adventure
ps
Historians might say time travel is impossible. But with a storyteller’s imagination, a canoe, and a plastic crocodile named Sarie… I’d argue otherwise.

05/21/2026

Still They Planted Gardens
by Sarah Poff
There are moments when I stop sorting through the old papers and photographs because the weight of them catches me off guard.
Not just the names.
Not just the dates.
But the lives hidden between those lines.

I think about my granny, born in 1904.
A little girl entering a world that would ask more of her generation than I can hardly imagine.

Before she was even grown, the world was at war.
By the time she should have been enjoying the sweetness of young adulthood, the Spanish Flu swept across the earth carrying away millions. Then came the Great Depression, when families wondered how they would feed their children and whether tomorrow would hold work or worry.

And just when they must have thought surely humanity had suffered enough, another world war arrived.

Sometimes we talk about those years like they are chapters in a history book.
But they weren’t chapters to them.
They were Tuesday mornings.
They were empty pantry shelves.
They were telegrams, folded flags, ration books, fear-filled prayers whispered beside beds at night.

My grandparents did not live glamorous lives.
They lived faithful ones.

They endured.
Quietly.
Without posting about it.
Without applause.
Without the world stopping to tell them how brave they were.

They buried loved ones.
They watched boys leave for war.
They feared diseases that could cripple a child overnight.
They lived through years when the future of the entire world seemed uncertain.

And yet somehow… they still planted gardens.
Still canned food.
Still laughed at kitchen tables.
Still went to church.
Still raised children to believe tomorrow would come.

That may be the part that humbles me the most.

They carried heavy things without letting bitterness define them.

When I look back now, I realize my grandparents were never simply “old people” sitting quietly in the background of my childhood.
They were survivors of storms I will never fully understand.

As a child, I probably thought they could not possibly understand my struggles.
Yet by the time my grandmother was my age, she had already walked through wars, epidemics, economic collapse, and fears of nuclear annihilation.

And somehow she still had enough tenderness left in her heart to love her grandchildren.

That is what nearly brings me to tears.

Not just what they survived…
but who they remained afterward.

Strong without becoming hard.
Faithful without becoming bitter.
Gentle after living through hard times.

The older I get, the more I understand that my grandparents were part of a generation that held the world together with worn hands, tired backs, prayer, determination, and hope.

And perhaps the greatest lesson they left us was this:

You keep going.
You love your family.
You trust God.
And even when the world feels uncertain, you keep building a life anyway.

05/19/2026

05/14/2026

That year’s school picture tells a little secret.

We didn’t have the budget for passports or plane tickets, but we had imagination—and that was enough to cross oceans. So one afternoon, I wrapped a striped cloth around my head, gathered a handful of paper palms, and stepped into the classroom as if I had just walked out of the desert sun.

The children didn’t see a teacher that day.

They saw Egypt.

The painted Pyramids along the Nile River. For just a moment, our classroom wasn’t in Missouri—it was along the Nile, full of wonder and possibility.

And I realized something quietly powerful:

You don’t always need to take children to the world.

Sometimes, if you’re just a little bold…
you can bring the world to them

05/11/2026

I Don’t See Rust and Ash—I See Us, I See Childhood
by Sarah Poff
There was a time when the world felt smaller, closer, and somehow warmer—even when the wind cut sharp across a bare winter yard. Back then, we didn’t haul our trash away in neat bags to the curb. We carried it out by hand, to a place much like this… a circle of ground worn bare, a few dented barrels, and the quiet understanding that this is where things ended.

Or maybe… where they lingered a little while longer.

I can still see the smoke curling up into the sky, thin at first, then thick and stubborn, carrying with it the scent of paper, cardboard, and the ordinary pieces of life. It wasn’t just trash—it was yesterday’s newspaper, worn-out boxes, bits of string, and sometimes things we didn’t quite want to part with but had no place left to keep.

On cold days, we’d linger there.
Not because we had to—but because of the warmth.

There was something about that fire… not grand like a bonfire, not celebratory, but steady. Honest. It gave off just enough heat to thaw small hands and red cheeks. You’d stand close, shifting from one foot to the other, watching the flames do their quiet work. The crackle, the glow—it had a rhythm you could fall into.

And sometimes, it gave you something to wonder about.

I remember once, watching an old couch burn. It seemed impossible at first—something so big, so solid, just… giving way. The fabric curled and blackened, the stuffing shrank into nothing, and slowly, piece by piece, it disappeared. And then there it was—what remained. Just the springs and the frame. Bare bones of something that once held laughter, naps, and tired bodies at the end of long days.

It felt like watching time itself peel things back to their simplest form.

But not all the memories by that barrel are quiet ones.

When I saw barrels like these again, standing in the sunlight, worn and rusted, my mind didn’t just drift—it jolted. Right back to a moment I have never forgotten.

My little brother… just three years old.

I can still see him so clearly.
The fire was going, the way it always did, and in a moment quicker than anyone could stop, he reached out—those tiny hands touching the side of that hot barrel. I remember the way he pulled back, the way he held his hands out, and the sound of his cries. It cut through everything—the crackle of the fire, the quiet of the yard.

It’s one of those moments that stays with you, not because you want it to—but because it’s stitched into your memory. A reminder of how quickly something simple can turn, how fragile those small, innocent moments really are.

And yet… even wrapped around that memory is love.

Because that’s what those days were made of. Not perfection. Not safety warnings on every corner. But real life—lived close to the ground, close to each other. We learned by being there. We stayed warm together. We watched, we wondered, we hurt, and we healed.

Those barrels held more than fire.
They held pieces of our story.

And standing here now, looking at them again, I don’t just see rust and ash.
I see us.
I see childhood.
I see the warmth of what was—and the quiet strength of what carried us through.

05/11/2026

The Day the Stagecoach Took Us Back in Time
by Sarah Poff
Well now… I knew something wasn’t quite right the moment the horses leaned forward… and we started going backward.

There we were, all proper and proud in that fine red stagecoach, feeling just a touch like we belonged in another century. The driver tipped his hat, the reins gave a gentle snap, and instead of heading west like any respectable traveler of the past…

we rolled straight into yesterday.

At first, we thought it was just a little bump in the road. But then the trees seemed greener… the air a bit quieter… and I could’ve sworn I heard a blacksmith hammering somewhere off in the distance.

“Now wait just a minute,” I said, peeking out the window. “Either this driver missed his calling… or we’ve slipped clean out of our own time.”

The man beside me just grinned. “Well,” he said, “you’re always telling stories about the past… looks like today, the past decided to come get you.”

And there we sat—smiling, laughing, and rolling backward through time—waving at a world that looked strangely familiar… yet just out of reach.

I suppose if you’re going to take a wrong turn in life…

you might as well make it a historical one.