Just before I left a meeting a few days ago I was invited to sit down and listen to a story. I sat and I was told the following story. A man lived in a faraway country. This man was looking for a wife. The tradition in his country was that he had to ask his father for permission to marry the woman he had chosen. Eventually he found a woman he thought he would be happy with and he went to his father to ask permission to marry her. His father explained that he could only give his permission if his son could lift a huge boulder and move it from where it was to a new position several feet away. His son, knowing that he could not marry the woman without performing this task, went across to the boulder and tried his best to lift it. Despite putting all of his energy and skill into his efforts he couldn’t budge the stone at all. His father said to the woman ‘Would you really want to marry a man as weak as this’? He did not give his son permission to marry the woman. Months passed and the son got over his disappointment and he found another woman. Again he went with the woman to his father and asked permis- sion to marry her. Yet again his father told him he had to lift the boulder and move it to the new position. The son felt more optimistic about his chances this time as he’d been in practising lifting great weights and he now felt much stronger. He walked confidently to the boulder smiling at the woman and started to try and lift the huge rock. He did better this time and could feel the rock start to move. He could distinctly feel that he was beginning to lift it up. But, despite his best efforts he could not lift it off the ground completely and couldn’t begin to see how to move it the seemingly great distance to the new position his father had decreed. His father spoke to the woman and said ‘See how weak my son is. He is not a good prospect as a husband’. Once again he denied his son permission to marry the woman. 267 EDITORIAL Far away and close to home . . . stones, stories and health care BERNIE CARTER Editor of the Journal of Health Care Professor of Children’s Nursing, Department of Nursing University of Central Lancashire, Preston, UK JCHC Journal of Child Health Care Copyright © 2006 SAGE Publications London, Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi Vol 10(4) 267–268 DOI: 10.1177/1367493506067867 Keywords child ● illness experiences ● stories ● story telling by guest on October 29, 2016 chc.sagepub.com Downloaded from