Our Family Story

Last year—the year of the pandemic, our daughter-in-law and son gave me a present.

The idea was that all year long, I would get a prompt via email that would encourage me to tell our family story. What a great idea!

Except I didn’t do it. All year long, the weekly prompt would arrive…and all year long, I said, ”Next weeK”. It’s hard to get started on something that important…and that emotional. What do you say? But then the year was up and our subscription to the service was done.

The service sent us an email that said, “Wind this up…now.” And then suddenly the task became urgent.

So we started. I included Dennis in the story telling and we wrote our book as if we were talking to our sons and daughters-in-law and our grandkids. ”What are your earliest memories of childhood?”

”What was your mother like? Your father? Are you more like your mother or father?”

“How did you meet? How did you decide to have children?”

And there were even tougher questions at the end:

“What are the secrets to good relationships?”

”What gives you peace of mind?”

”What is the meaning of life?”

Each story became a chapter of our book. We celebrated the great parts of our lives. And we cried again over the painful parts.

But, in the end, we now have a story book for our kids and grandkids. And they will have some insight into what is important to both of us. Dennis and I are like two peas in a pod after all these years. But on the other hand, we are very different. And we wrote our stories very differently.

What did we learn? That as tedious as it was to sit down and write our stories, it was a good exercise. A good exercise at looking at the past and how we have become the people we are now.

And it has given us insight into our future. It’s never too late to learn to do better. To be kinder. More patient. More forgiving. More loving.

The gift that was for our kids and grandkids ultimately became a gift to ourselves, too.

How special is that!