I’m Back!!!

My apologies for the time since my last post but it was a busy summer, I have been working my new “job”, which I will tell you about in my next post, and I have been busy with another writing project which I want to tell you about today.

How much do you know or remember about your childhood?  How often do you talk to your parents (if they are still living) about their childhoods?  What toys did you/they play with?  Who were your/their favorite musicians?

I thought I knew a lot about my parents and I thought I remembered quite a bit about my own childhood but the writing project that I have been working on has really shown me that I don’t remember #@*% and that I did not have as many conversations as I wish I would have with my parents about their lives.  I can use the excuse of my dad’s death because I was only 19 when he passed away and was consumed with myself so I really did not ask a lot about him so what I do remember is what he shared with me nearly 40 years ago or what my mom and other family members told me about him.  I will also say that after my dad passed away my mom and I didn’t talk a lot about him.  I thought it would make her sad.  Now that I know so much more about grief she was probably longing to talk about him and their life together–what a missed opportunity.  

I don’t have much of an excuse with my mom.  I had her for 42 years of my life and we were super close.  We talked about a lot of things but now looking back we didn’t talk about the small, important details of her life so much.

Last year, when I lost my cousin Mary besides losing my best friend I also lost our family historian.  I could always ask her questions about my dad’s family, our aunts and uncles, our cousins and for the most part she would have the answers.  There really is no one else I can do that with now.  My brother and I just the other day were trying to piece together all of my dad’s siblings birth and death dates and I just knew that if Mary was there not only could she fill in the blanks but she would have some interesting stories about them along the way–man do I miss her!  Thankfully my brother has a pretty remarkable memory of our childhood so he reminds me of stories and timelines–at least how he remembers things 🙂

So why am I so interested in all of this all of a sudden???  First, I have to go back probably 20 years ago when the girls were young.  I had bought these books/journals in which Don and I could respond to prompts regarding our lives.  The goal was to answer a question a month and by the time the girls graduated from high school we could give them the books as a gift and they would have a little autobiography from each of us.  Well. . .that did not go as planned.  By the time Maddie graduated from high school we might have answered 10 questions. . maybe.  Okay, that’s alright, let’s regroup.  We can give them it for their college graduation!  Maybe 2 more questions were answered by then–wedding gift?  Gift for our first grandchild?  This obviously was not going to happen.  I was so disappointed.  I thought this was a great idea.  However, our busy lives just did not allow us to carve out the time to really do a thoughtful job on this.  Even when we did find time, it seemed like we rushed through our answers just to get it done.

This past spring, we were watching Don’s favorite show, Shark Tank.  A person came on looking for an investment in his company, Remento, which is a tool for people to basically record their life history.  His reasoning for starting this company was touching and inspirational.  He had lost his dad in the 9/11 terrorist attacks when he was very young so he did not have a lot of memories of his dad and did not learn a lot about his life which created a hole in his life.  As an adult, his mother got cancer and he was determined not to let this happen again so he started asking his mom questions about her life and recorded her answers.  He realized that many people would love to do this for their family members so he created Remento.  Sidenote–his mother survived her cancer diagnosis.  Right away Don was super excited and reached out to our girls and asked them to get us a subscription for Mother and Father’s Day.

Each week we get a prompt that the girls either select from the list of prompts that the website has available or they come up with their own questions.  We do a video recording of our answers and the website then transcribes our recordings to written word.  We can then go in and edit our words and add pictures.  When we are finished with this project next year, Remento will create a book with all of our stories and pictures.  With each prompt will be a QR code that our kids or anyone who reads our books can scan and it will take them to our video recording of our answers.

It has been a truly wonderful experience but it does take time.  Don and I are definitely using different processes to complete and Don of course gets his promptly done the same day he receives a question.  He also is creative in where he does his recordings and what he is wearing based on what he is talking about.  He is taking such time and effort and pride in this project.  It is really touching to see.  It has also sparked a lot of conversations between the two of us.  You think you know everything about someone but then you do a project like this and you learn so much about each other.

It usually takes me longer to complete the prompts mainly because when I am looking for pictures to go along with my writing I am sent right down a rabbit hole where I am paging through albums or scrolling through my pictures on my phone and before you know it hours have passed!  But what is so great about this project vs the book we were trying to write in is that we now have the time to really dig into these questions and we are at a point in our lives that we enjoy reflecting on our lives.

However, as I said in the beginning it has also shown me that my memory is horrible and that I have such regrets about not asking enough questions when I had the chance.  Recently, one of the prompts asked how our parents met.  Well, this had to be one of the shortest recordings because I had no idea.  I know they met because my mom was best friends with my dad’s sister but I had no idea who started liking who first?  Where did they go on their first date?  How did my dad propose?  How do I not know these things?

I recently was at a gathering with some friends and one of the women was telling us not only where she grew up but where her dad grew up.  She had such details of his life and I was so jealous.  Now, he is 93 so she has had a lot of years to hear his stories but I couldn’t help thinking about all the missed opportunities I had when my parents would haul us up to Ashland, the city they grew up in every summer.  All I could think about is how bored I was when this was really a great opportunity to learn so much about my parents.

We also recently went to a Brewer game with my brother and sister in law and while we were eating before the game we were telling them about our Remento project and we asked them about a recent prompt we had.  Wow, did we learn so much about them and their early years.  We found out that they were both going to school to become teachers!  I had never known that if life would have turned out differently they would have been in the same profession as Don and I!

The moral of this story is if you still have your parents or any family member start asking them questions about their life.  Even those family members you think you know pretty well.  You would be surprised how one question can spark an entire conversation that brings you closer together.  If you are parents or aunts and uncles and you would like to pass your stories on, start doing it.  Not only will it assist a whole new generation to learn about you and your generation but it is truly therapeutic and you will get so much out of it.

I challenge you all as you sit around the Thanksgiving table this week to ask a question, not about their current job or what’s new with the kids.  Ask a question that will prompt them to talk about their lives.  If you need some help, these were our last two prompts:

Tell us the story behind your first and middle name! Also – how did you come up with the names for your own children?

What are 5 songs that you associate with each decade of your life so far?