Monday, February 27, 2006




Monday Memories: Did I ever tell you about:
When my letters turned into a memoir?

When my children left home about 20 years ago, I was suffering from empty nest syndrome big time. I decided to gather up the letters I’d written to my mother and sisters and the ones they’d written me and excerpt the “crazy” time in our year--from about Halloween through January so I would have a written record of our family life. Both children have November birthdays, so that’s about the time things really heated up at our house.

After looking through the letters (which my mother had saved), I pushed the time line back another 10 years and started with my years in college until I had about 30 years worth of letters. And I added in letters from girl friends, cousins, and in-laws. (I never throw away a letter). It was hours of typing (at the office after work since I didn’t have a computer then) and careful editing out really personal stuff. My husband designed an artistic cover, and I had the little book reproduced and bound at Kinko's.

Although the collection recorded all the cute and interesting things about my children’s growing up years, it also inadvertently became a story about a group of women--with a few men around the fringes--who were keeping things going by following a few familiar holiday traditions. At the beginning, I'm a college student and my mother is 47 years old with three children in college, a married daughter and two little grandchildren. My niece and nephew are 3 and 2 in the first letter and then are parents of their own children at the end, and repeating many of the same traditions, questions, and yearnings we letter writers had. Some people who didn’t write letters are in the collection anyway--their health and well-being and activities reported by the women who tell the stories year after year.

These letters recorded the ordinary events of our lives to the faint drumbeat of the cold war, the civil rights movement, space flight, the VietNam war, political campaigns, Watergate, economic growth and slowdown cycles, the rise of feminism, employment crises, career changes and family reconfigurations. On and on we wrote, from the conservatism of the Eisenhower years, on through the upheaval of the 60's, the stagnation of the 70's, then into the conservatism of Reagan/Bush in the 80s. National and international events are rarely discussed in these letters as though we were pulling the family close into the nest for a respite from the world's woes. If you were to read the letters, you might miss that we were even aware of world events. Or maybe because, as one of my sisters noted in a letter, when you're struggling on the home front sometimes there isn't much left to give to others.

The edited letters became the rhythm of women's lives--nursing a dying parent, holding a sick child, putting up the tree, playing the old records, going to the post office, baking favorite Christmas cookies, helping with school work, going to holiday programs, creating crafts with the children, shopping for gifts, checking the sky for some sunshine, wallpapering the hall, folding the laundry, looking for that just right job.

E-mail and blogging will have an effect on family memoirs--it will be interesting to review this phenomenon in 30 years. Digital is much less permanent than paper. Print out what is worth keeping--your children will be grown and gone the next time you turn around. And when they ask you why you printed them out for safe keeping, tell them, "Because Norma said so."

Links to Other Monday Memories
1. Kimmy, 2. AnvilCloud 3. Katherine, 4. Courtney, 5. Frog Legs, 6. Shelli, 7. Libragirl, 8. Melanie, 9. Beckie,


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6 comments:

Kimmy said...

That is wonderful! An awesome idea. A wonderful way to celebrate the memories.

I'm printing this to show my mom... the next time she asks me why I'm keeping a letter or card or scribbled note... I'm gonna tell her, "Because Norma said so." You're just what I needed! :p

My birthday's in November, Jacob's birthday is in November, and our Snickers' birthday is in November. I hear that's when all the special people were born! :p

Katherine said...

That is so cool! Great idea, too. My first Monday Memory is up, too.

Anvilcloud said...

I write a lot more since the internet came on the scene. I don't have paper cards and letters, but I have binders of old emails and have printed some of my blogs for posterity.

Courtney said...

Wow, how wonderful! What a special way to keep the memories alive.

Thanks for visiting my MM today :)

Melzie said...

My mo is so good about saving our letters.. I know, fo rme, looking back through the emails I sent her when I was expecting her first grandchild is wonderful! I need to start doing that...

Mama Kelly said...

what an incredible idea and powerful memory to share

I posted my first MM today and am enjoying reading everyone's entries