Let’s move down the corridor of our mansion to where the diamond dust of time settles. This deep, rich mahogany door creaks with age as it swings open to welcome us. Billowy priscilla curtains grace the windows. It is a room filled with memories. Walls are lined with portraits of ancestors long dead but often remembered.
The room houses antiques, relics that tie the past to the present. It holds different memories for each of us. This chapter is a lure to cast you into the past to gather special memories—a heritage for your children. It is also to encourage you to begin a room full of memories for your children.
I will share some memories out of our family’s past. As I do, think about your own. Write down the thoughts that come to you, and as you do, your memory room will begin to fill with a treasure more valuable than any gem—your family—your heritage.
In one corner sits an ancient Singer sewing machine. Remember how Great-Grandma used to pump the pedal and make it whir? A velvet-covered photo album, its pages yellow with age, catches my eye. I blow away the dust and watch a billion golden specks dance upon the sunbeams.
Here’s an antique RCA Victrola that belonged to Great-Great-Grandma Stephens. “She’s gone now,” I tell my son when he sees the picture of himself as a baby lying in the old woman’s arms. But we have that five-generation picture.
Leaning against the big woodstove is a cast-iron skillet. Remember the time Great-Grandma Cora caught the nanny goat eating Granddad’s long johns? She grabbed the first thing she could get her hands on, this skillet, and chased the old goat clear across the pasture.
Great-Grandma Cora never liked that goat. Can’t say I blame her—especially after it sneaked in the back door and jumped on the dining-room table she’d just set.
Memories Tell Us Who We Are
I’ve often felt that one of the greatest gifts I could give my children was to pass along a rich heritage. I want them to know their ancestors and where they came from. Kids need a mom to show them that they can play an important part in the history of a family. Many families have developed a family tree. If you don’t have one, you may want to start one to go in the front of a memory journal.
Our family tree is filled with interesting people. My father was born in Sweden and sailed to America in 1928 at the age of eighteen. My mother was born in a farming community in North Dakota. Her parents were pure-blooded Norwegians who came over about 1909. We are not royalty, just Scandinavian and proud of it.
My husband is a mixture of German, Scotch-Irish, En-glish, and one one-hundred-twenty-eighth Indian. His great-granddad and grandma participated in the Cherokee Land Rush. Later they headed west to the Oregon territory.
His grandmother’s family are descendants of the Fairbanks family—one of the first to settle in the colonies. They sailed from England on the Griffin, a year after the Mayflower, and built the Fairbanks house in Dedham, Massachusetts, the oldest frame house still standing in the United States.
The children’s grandfather was stationed at Pearl Harbor during the Japanese attack on December 7, 1941. Grandpa Gene helped beach the battleship Nevada, after it had been bombed, to keep it from sinking and blocking the channel. Grandpa’s brother, Harvey, was killed in the same bombing.
My children are part of a colorful history. Children are interested in their background. My kids always used to ask me questions like, “Did they have cars when you were a kid, Mom?” It is exciting for them to see their names on the family tree. Memories tell us who we are.
It takes time to build those memories. One nice thing about sharing memories is that moms don’t have to tell all the tales alone. In fact, sometimes it’s more effective when Grandpa, Grandma, or Great-Aunt Flo do the honors. Gloria Gaither and Shirley Dobson in their book Let’s Make a Memory suggest a prearranged visit to be made with grandparents and/or great-grandparents (or uncles and aunts) for the purpose of recording family history.
I Remember Mama
When your children are grown, what would you like them to remember about you? There are several ways you can have a hand in what memories they hold on to. Building memories is one of the nicest things you can do for your children and yourself.
We can’t control all the memories our kids keep, but we sure can help make the ones that count. For a start, think back to what you remember most about your childhood.
I remember … riding in the front seat of my parents’ old Model T. I would stand between Mom and Dad, and we’d sing a rousing chorus of “Yo ho ho, you and me. Little brown jug, how I love thee.”
You might wonder what they were doing teaching me, their sweet, innocent baby, songs like that, but I never thought about the words … only the love. In fact, I didn’t even realize what those words meant until just now as I wrote them down.
I remember … Mama baking bread and fixing me a thick slice with fresh cream and homemade jelly. And Mama playing her guitar, teaching us to sing along.
I remember … standing out in the backyard with my dad. He was visiting for the day. Dad suffered from tuberculosis and had to stay in a TB sanitarium. We’d had turkey for dinner. Funny—I don’t remember much about the meal … only the love. He made a wish with me and we each pulled on an end of the wishbone until it broke. I won. He said we had to bury it so the wish could come true and I wasn’t to tell anyone. I didn’t. I had wished he’d get well and come home. Several months later, he did.
I remember … jumping into the big double bed where Grandma and Grandpa Olsen slept, early, early on cold winter mornings. I’d snuggle down between the two of them and hug them awake. I don’t remember much about what we said … only the love.
How will your children remember Mama? Often, it’s not simply the things a person does that make a memory dear, but the way a person is. For example, when I remember family members, I first remember what they were like. Were they grumpy and complaining, or were they fun-loving? Did they seem to want time to pass quickly so death could alleviate their misery, or did they savor each moment as though it were the last?
One of the ways to develop good memories for your children is to learn the art of celebrating life.
Life Is a Celebration
If an occasion is worth celebrating it is worth celebrating because God made it so. Whether it is birth, life, love, marriage, graduation, death, national integrity, material plenty, or spiritual salvation that we are celebrating—it is a gift of God. Celebrate in such a way as never to offend the Giver![1]
Eugenia Smith-Durland
Have you ever thought of mothering our children as one of life’s celebrations? We celebrate birthdays, holidays, and the Fourth of July, but life is more than an occasional splash in the pool of existence.
As a mother who wanted the best for her kids, I felt it important to teach them how to celebrate something more than Christmas. I wanted them to:
Celebrate … the victory of a turtle in a race against time. Or Dr. Seuss’s green eggs and ham.
Celebrate … the opening of a robin’s egg as the scrawny, near-skeletal creature announces its arrival.
Celebrate … as we watch a caterpillar spin itself into a tomb and rise again as a colorful, winged creature—free to fly.
Celebrate … as we listen and feel the heartbeat of a baby in Mom’s belly.
Celebrate … and be like the sun, bursting forth in a fireworks display announcing its glorious coming. It warms the day and gives freely of its light. Then when the day’s work is over, it settles down in a brilliance not easily forgotten. Even when clouds cover the sun, it is still there—shiny and warm, ready to seep into us and cheer us when the clouds pass.
An advertisement for General Foods International encourages you to “celebrate the moments of your life.” We don’t need the coffee, however, to help us celebrate. We can simply tap the resources inside us.
We live such busy lives. How many celebrations pass by unnoticed in yours? In all the children I have questioned about what they needed most in a mom, none of them ever said, “I need a mom who will show me how to celebrate life and take pleasure in each moment of the day.”
But now that my children are older, it’s those mini-celebrations they remember best.
The Making of a Memory
Memories and celebrations are wonderful, but how can we hold on to those memories? The mind can hold a vast storehouse of information, but it’s amazing how easily we forget. Below I’ve listed a few ideas that we’ve used to keep memories in our home.
Pictures. When our children were young we took pictures of everything. We captured all the intimate details of the first bath, the first goo, the first tooth, and even when they mastered potty training. We have pictures of each Christmas and Easter, of camping trips and picnics. We snapped pictures of each acrobatic trick from the time they learned to balance on the palm of Daddy’s hand (at around the age of one) through their gymnastic meets in grade school and junior high.
The pictures are available to the kids anytime. I remember one evening hearing the downstairs den exploding with laughter. My kids, then in high school, had pulled out the slide projector and were showing slides to their friends.
Repetition. We repeatedly spent time with the children. We made a point of spending time together as a family. The children remember, because we made a habit of enjoying life. We bought a tent trailer when the children were young and went camping nearly every weekend during the summer. Naturally, we took pictures that now help to jog our memories and remind us of the fun we had.
A friend tells us how she made a habit of taking a walk with each child separately on a regular basis. These were special times of sharing secrets and talking in depth.
Another friend, Angela, shared this:
There are seven kids in my family and I’m the oldest. I had to pick up a lot of slack for my mom. Looking back, I have a hard time remembering her doing anything with me alone, except for this: Every once in a while, she would take me out on a long walk.
We would go around the suburbs for about an hour. We were alone. I don’t remember her reading to me or anything in particular, but I remember those walks.
That’s why it’s so important for me to spend time with my kids. I saw a poem in a catalog once that included this line: “I wish I’d found the time to do the little things you asked me to.”
Perhaps that’s the lament of every mother. I don’t know, because my kids are small yet. Nevertheless, I try to do something with them alone every day. Sometimes it’s just reading with them before bed. I take walks with my kids, too. Being outdoors does something for us.
Ultimately, I hope my children will remember that I showed them I loved them in many ways, one of which was time alone with them.
Tradition. Especially during the holidays, tradition helps to build and store memories. We try to keep the traditions brought over to this country from our ancestors’ homeland. Mine are from Sweden and Norway, and our yuletide wouldn’t be complete without a proper Scandinavian food fair of lefse, fattiman, and krumkake, just to name a few.
Every year, a week or so before Christmas, we would join our longtime friends on a Christmas tree hunt up in the mountains. Our two families stopped at a park on the way and ate a snack and warmed up with hot chocolate. Then we made our way up into the snowy fields and searched for the perfect tree. Most of the time, our trees were never as thick or well-shaped as the kind that were groomed for such occasions. But they were special, because we braved the elements and tracked them down in the wilderness, as our ancestors might have.
Our trees were never elegantly ornamented with color-coordinated balls and glitter either. They held our handmade ornaments, and every year the boughs seem more endowed. I still have many ornaments the children made and proudly display them.
Spontaneity. Not all memories of the holiday times need to be based on tradition. Sometimes spontaneity builds the best memories of all. One Christmas the kids decided, on the spur of the moment, to dress in Mary and Joseph costumes. With a doll playing the part of Jesus in swaddling clothes, they gave us their unedited version of the Christmas story. We took pictures to preserve the memory.
Journals. One sure way of storing memories, besides photos and the closets of your mind, is a journal in which you write those special events you want to remember. Memories, if left to the imagination, often fade. It is a special treat to spend a rainy day rummaging through photos and journals of days gone by.
Often, as children grow older, especially during their teens, we may forget those happy family moments for a while. My son had an especially stormy adolescence. There were times when I wondered if we’d ever have a happy memory again. But we have. Even then we found that memories were a way to bring back smiles. As your family grows, keep your memories, ponder them in your heart, and share them from time to time in family gatherings.
Play the “Remember When” game when your family gets together. Just remind the kids of something they once did, like, “Hey, remember when you operated on that fat snake to see what was inside and delivered its baby?”
“Remember when?”
Memories Can’t Take the Place of People
No matter how sweet the memories, it’s important that we be there for our kids whenever possible.
I remember a TV show where Punky Brewster, a fourth-grader, was given an assignment by her teacher to make a family tree. Punky couldn’t do it—she had no family.
She lived with a foster father after her mother had apparently deserted her. That evening as her foster father tucked her into bed, Punky said, “I miss my mommy so much.”
“Yes, but you still have memories.”
“I know.” Punky sighed. “But you can’t talk to a memory. You can’t hug or kiss a memory. You can’t sit on a memory’s lap. Memories don’t even have laps.”
Building memories is wonderful, but memories can never take the place of a mother’s presence. Kids need a mother who takes time to be in the present to build memories for their future’s past.
Memories are all we have left of the time that slips away. Perhaps the greatest hindrance to making memories with your children is the idea that you can always do it tomorrow. I don’t want to be a pessimist, but we really don’t know how many tomorrows we have left, or what they hold. So start building memories today.