my mother started a personal history before she died. she really only got a handful of pages down before she stopped. i'm disappointed with that small number of pages and yet, i treasure them. my favorite part of her history is hearing her voice. she was a funny lady and when i read what she wrote i can hear her again. i have always felt like a personal history is something you write when you are at the end of your life, but i think i was wrong. if my mom had written more when she was younger, then i would have more of her words to read. but she didn't, and as it stands now my children have zero words of mine to read. i need to remedy this by writing my personal history, starting this year.
at first this idea overwhelmed me, but i don't think it has to be. one night i asked ryan, "what do you remember about first grade?" and he told me. then i told him what i remembered. later it hit me: that conversation we had was a personal history. the fact that my teacher was mrs. dodd and that the first day of preschool i waited for lindsay yanez to come sit with me, i even saved her a seat, and when she sat down we held hands, tightly. she was my best friend. we played together every day. all of that? a personal history. now i just needed to write it all down. and if i spend just fifteen minutes a week, i'll have more than enough by the year's end. only fifteen minutes.
one day a week for the next fifty-one i'm going to post a prompt to encourage you to take five (or fifteen!) minutes, open up a word document and record your memories for your children, even if you don't have any (because even if you don't ever have any, you'll have nieces and nephews and they'll love it).
if you have ideas for prompts, please share. if you have an experience writing your personal history, or with someone else's personal history, please share. this is something we should have, it will leave behind a piece of us for our families to cherish.
"Occasionally we got into mischief. Once we tied up David and put him in a box. We put the box on a skate board and rolled it across the street to an unoccupied house and put him inside. He got out of the box and ran around the house wildly. When that house was occupied David, Philip and I took to stealing the newspaper and then watching as the people came outside and looked for it—on the roof, on the side, in the bushes. We thought it was hilarious. I recall also baking a cake in the kitchen of a different unoccupied house. I don’t know how we got into those houses, that was taken care of by the older kids."
at first this idea overwhelmed me, but i don't think it has to be. one night i asked ryan, "what do you remember about first grade?" and he told me. then i told him what i remembered. later it hit me: that conversation we had was a personal history. the fact that my teacher was mrs. dodd and that the first day of preschool i waited for lindsay yanez to come sit with me, i even saved her a seat, and when she sat down we held hands, tightly. she was my best friend. we played together every day. all of that? a personal history. now i just needed to write it all down. and if i spend just fifteen minutes a week, i'll have more than enough by the year's end. only fifteen minutes.
one day a week for the next fifty-one i'm going to post a prompt to encourage you to take five (or fifteen!) minutes, open up a word document and record your memories for your children, even if you don't have any (because even if you don't ever have any, you'll have nieces and nephews and they'll love it).
if you have ideas for prompts, please share. if you have an experience writing your personal history, or with someone else's personal history, please share. this is something we should have, it will leave behind a piece of us for our families to cherish.
"Occasionally we got into mischief. Once we tied up David and put him in a box. We put the box on a skate board and rolled it across the street to an unoccupied house and put him inside. He got out of the box and ran around the house wildly. When that house was occupied David, Philip and I took to stealing the newspaper and then watching as the people came outside and looked for it—on the roof, on the side, in the bushes. We thought it was hilarious. I recall also baking a cake in the kitchen of a different unoccupied house. I don’t know how we got into those houses, that was taken care of by the older kids."
-from my mother's personal history (haha!)
to share email me at anchorandbird@gmail.com
Great idea! I'm definitely going to join you. I love the story from your mom's history, thanks for sharing.
ReplyDeletei love how when i read your posts i hear YOUR voice in my head. might just have to jump on this bandwagon
ReplyDeletethat is an amazing idea. that one paragraph of your mom's is hilarious. i agree that by reading someone's words you hear their voice and that is something to treasure. my problem is that i am a terrible writer! your history will actually be enjoyable to read!!
ReplyDelete