Capturing Family Memories
Posted by Lisa Hendey in Family on Saturday, November 15, 2008 7:00 AM
At Real Simple this month, they are offering a free download and an article entitled “Get to Know Your Family and Friends Better”.
With the holidays approaching, many of us will find ourselves in the midst of extended family and friends. In true “Martha and Mary” fashion, we’ll likely find ourselves torn between the tasks of hospitality and serving, and the desire to spend quality time with our guests.
With only one of my grandparents still living, one of my greatest regrets is that I wasn’t wise enough to spend time truly listening to my elderly relatives and learning more from them about their life experiences. So much of our family history is a mystery to me, and now that I’m getting older myself it saddens me.
I wish now that I could sit over tea with both of my grandmothers and chat with them. I’d ask my maternal grandmother about her later-in-life marriage and her struggles to become pregnant with my mom, her only child. I’d ask my paternal grandmother how on earth she managed to parent seven crazy kids and still maintain such an active prayer life. I know her parents lived next door to her and were very involved in her day to day life as a parent - I’d love to know how she and her mother got along living in such close proximity.
Family gatherings can be the perfect time to ask these types of questions and to truly stop and listen to the answers. It might even be fun to offer your child a small digital recorder or video camera and let them “interview” Grandma and Grandpa. Along with family photos, it would be wonderful to have some oral history of the lives our parents and grandparents lived when they were young.
Are you a budding family historian? What ideas can you share for capturing special family moments and memories?
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