I was reminded about this post I'd blogged about a while ago on recording family stories, when I saw a recent reader comment. So much has changed since then. My 80-year-old father is now on the East coast, much closer to my brothers and me. I can visit him in person now. We're seeing some of the things that you start to see as people get older. But it's so much scarier to see a parent experience any kind of memory loss, even when the doctor says it's normal for that age. We have a family ritual of playing backgammon with my dad. The other week when I was visiting him, I was able to "Mars" my dad (win two points) — something I think I've never done before, as he's so quick with backgammon and always beats me. And it didn't feel good to win. In fact, it worried me.
My hope of getting a recording of his family tree and some of his family and childhood stories didn't get off the ground. I had a difficult time prompting my dad to remember stories and spell out relatives' names with a question-answer method. So I'm trying again. I picked up this book that I'm really excited about. It's called the Bride & Groom Family Tree album from Chronicle Books. The pages are filled with templates to fill in — names, occupations, hobbies, and love stories about relatives — as well as space for anecdotes that you may discover. There's space for photos, too (so you know what your great-great-grandmother looks like.) I'm hoping that bringing a tactile book with me when I visit my dad will help us chart out some memories together. I'm also excited to bring it up to Maine and learn more about Dan's family's stories. Once I get all the information compiled, I'd love to get a genealogy chart to display on the wall — something more modern, like the ones shared on design*sponge yesterday.
What I like most about the book is that it's simple and structured. I know it's a big project to undertake, and I don't want to waste any time fiddling with making my own album. This was one of those times where I was happy to pick up something ready-made so I can get started.
