THE MEMORY BOOK

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Last Christmas before La Princepessa was born, TLW (The Little Woman) and I were handed an assignment from the newly minted parents to fill out a ‘Memory Book’ with the premise of: “Did you really walk five miles to school?”

The book is a great idea to communicate into the future to your grandchild, answering questions of grandma and grandpa about their own childhood and what life was like in those days.

Of course to answer the question posed I would have to say ‘Yes’, making it only five miles even more believable! In actuality, even though I lived right around the corner from the school. It seemed that I got lost a lot, so I did really walk five miles to school every day!

But some of the questions are kind of difficult to answer when posed such as: “How old were you when you started to notice you were getting grey hair?” and I have to answer that: “Right after I met your grandmother!”

It took me about three days to answer all the questions, because I printed the answers and had to leave room for Grandma to write. Now La Principessa Darby Shea will be able to read my handwriting, but will still need to take it to the pharmacy to get her grandmother’s answers read!

The memory book is a good idea, and maybe I can somehow tie in a memory of photos with captions or narrative to go with it, a kind of history for her. I could only imagine what life was like for my grandparents, so this would be a wonderful tool for her to keep for a lifetime.

She will learn about her dad, what he was like growing up and if he was a good boy or not. She will also know about her grandfather, who wasn’t an angel, as her great grandmother used to say to me: “You are so bad Jesus Christ will come down off the cross confused!”