Happy 100th Birthday to Blanche Lippincott

Blanche Lippincott, 100 years old (photo by Susan Lippincott Mack)

Although the number of centenarians is rapidly growing, having a hundredth birthday is not a once-in-a-lifetime experience for very many people. My mother-in-law, Blanche Lippincott, is one of those people, and I pause today to celebrate with her.

Blanche was born 100 years ago in Tucson, in the newly admitted state of Arizona. Her family soon moved to Ray, Arizona, a now deserted copper mining community, where they lived until she was about twelve. When the the copper industry declined, her parents, along with a few aunts and uncles, decided to move back to Philadelphia.

After high school she worked for a few years in the accounting department for the telephone company. In 1937 she met and married Ezra Lippincott, and they lived happily ever after – although ever after came a bit sooner than expected. He died unexpectedly early in 1969, leaving her a widow at only 57.

During those happy years they enjoyed entertaining, and their parties were always a hit. They took several Caribbean cruises back when ships were smaller and dinner was a full dress event.

After his death, she began a new career, working as a teller for a neighborhood bank, a job she held until she was forced to retire at the age of seventy.

If you asked her, she’d tell you she has had a rather ordinary life, and so it may seem to some. She’s never done anything truly flamboyant. She hasn’t set records, started a business, or written a best-seller. But she has tackled life with gusto, always open to new adventures and experiences. She’s played golf and bridge. She collected and refurbished antiques. She took tailoring lessons and dancing lessons. She belonged to Questers for dozens of years.

Perhaps her  most important attribute is her devotion to family, friends and community. When she married she became a member of the Religious Society of Friends, better known as the Quakers, and she has been a steadfast member ever since, serving on countless committees and helping with events. No family member or friend ever has to ask for help – things are taken care of, often before the need is recognized. She always has something good to say about anyone she speaks of, and she excels at showing gratitude and appreciation.

In 1994 she moved into an independent living apartment in a  Continuing Care Retirement Community, and within a short time she knew virtually every one of about 150 residents along with their life stories. Every time we’d go from her apartment to the central area, we’d have to stop a dozen times as she greeted another resident and introduced one or both of us. It has often been difficult to reach her by phone because she’s always out at an activity. Until recently that often included playing bridge, but her eyesight has deteriorated so much that’s no longer possible. When she quit driving five or six years ago, she retired from the local hospital thrift shop where she had served as a volunteer for over twenty years.

I could not ask for a sweeter, more supportive and helpful mother-in-law, nor is anyone prouder than she of her two children and their spouses, her five grandchildren and their spouses, and her six great-grandchildren. She is the most optimistic person I know, and should I live to be 100, I hope I’ll be as vital and involved as she continues to be.

Happy Birthday Blanche. May your good health and happiness continue for every one of your remaining days.

Playing with the Process

Yesterday was my dad's 90th birthday. One day last week the following conversation took place between my husband and me:

“Rats! I forgot to shop for a card for my father!”

“Why don't you make him something like Gil made my mother?” Gil is a friend of my mother-in-law's who lives in her retirement community. For her recent 98th birthday, he snagged some historical highlights of her birth year from the web, added a few sappy sentiments at the end, and wowed everyone. It was sweet, but … if I were going to do something like that, it would be a bit more, well, elegant. And definitely not sappy.

“I don't want to. It would take forever. … But … let me look at Gil's thing again.” He dug it out.

Hmm, I thought. How long could it take to pull a few facts off the web. A little bit more formatting, maybe a couple of graphics. Surely I could think of a suitable conclusion.

I cranked up Google to explore 1920. Most events pertained to war, the aftermath of war, or what would later be recognized as preludes to war. But did you know that's the year it became illegal to mail babies via the USPS? Prohibition began that year – for alcohol in this country and contraceptives in France.

I started playing with layout. A little graphic maybe? Yeck! Boring hardly began to describe it.

Let me see what I can do with PowerPoint, I thought. A few slides, a few graphics. How long could that take?

I knew. I truly knew. But I realized I'd been bitten by this bug and  the only way out was through.

Let's just say I didn't sleep much that night, and most planned tasks sat undone the next day. By the middle of the day after that, I had created a PowerPoint slideshow with animated loads and transitions for text and graphics. I'd snagged audio of a 19w0 top hit parade song. The final slide was an animated version of the image you see above, accompanied by a version of  Happy Birthday, sung way better than our family could ever do. I'd converted the file to a Flash video with the free iSpring plug-in. All was done.

“Good grief, if I'd realized how much time you'd sink into this project, I never would have suggested it!”

“I knew. It's always that way. That's why I didn't want to do it, but I'm glad I did. It was fun.”

It was fun. And it's typical of most projects I do, even more intentional ones. A project may seem too big, too vast. But I've learned through time that if I just nibble on a corner, I'll find my way.

I cranked out a handout recently for the next series of my Writing for the Health of It class. I had no idea how to do it. So I began writing a few basic ideas. Those led to more. Soon I had a sense of direction. In a surprisingly short period of time, it all flowed together. A formatting tweak here, another there. Print it out for an edit.

The key is to get lost in the process. Let it lead the way. If I try to force it to go the way I want, I always get discouraged. If I let the energy of the project lead the way, the path is a lot smoother.

These are some of the principles I've always known and used on some level, as far back as high school when I worked on the props committee for drama club plays. I was delighted to find that Mark David Gerson summarizes them most eloquently on the front page of his website, starting with Rule #1:

Rule #1: There are no rules: How can there be when creativity is all about breaking new ground and breaking old rules?

Thanks Mark David. This list is wind beneath our wings and a great reason to ask Santa to put a copy of your book in our stockings — paired with a copy of mine!

Write now: think of a story you want to write and play with it. Using Mark David's list as guidance, let it tell you how it wants to be written.  

P.S. I know you'll wonder. I can't show you the finished product, because I created it for strictly personal purposes and posting it publicly would violate copyright all over the place.

Searing Memories

Photo: Aaron Wagner

We all have them, those memories that are so vivid they blaze in our memories forever. We remember exactly where we were, what we were wearing, the time of day, and all the details — although we may not remember the specific date.

One of my searing memories takes me back to one wintry Saturday in eighth grade. The phone rang about eleven in the morning. It was a boy — calling me! History was made that day. I’ll save the details for my memoir, and tell you only that it was the hottest guy in our class, asking me to meet him at the ice rink that afternoon. No! This was too good to be true. Besides, my parents wouldn’t let me date until I was sixteen. Besides, he sounded just like my best girl friend, who had a rather husky voice, and I kept trying to get “her” to admit who she was.

When I called her immediately after hanging up, she assured me she hadn’t called. I believed her. The voice didn’t sound quite the same. When I got back to school on Monday, I was apparently invisible to Hunky Dude. Just as before, he never looked my way, even though our lockers were near each other. Had it really been him? Or was someone pulling my leg?

I’ll never know for sure, but I do know that I felt good about the way I played the game. I had a strong gut feeling that if it had been him, I was being set up for some awful humiliation at the rink. I can only guess what that might have been, but I didn’t need it and was blessedly spared. I felt strong and capable of taking care of myself. This searing memory is a turning point in my relationships with boys. The concept of actually having a boyfriend turned from the theoretical into the possible that day, even though I suspected it would be a good long while before anything tangible came along.

Searing memories, defining moments, turning points. In The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing I refer to them as watershed memories. It doesn’t matter what you call them, they are mileposts along our journey through life. We all have them. Some are joyful and mark advances. Some are traumatic, some may be quietly profound. All are significant and provide strong pillars for organizing related memories as you develop stories.

Taking time to list your watershed memories and arrange them along a timeline will  pay enormous dividends are you organize your life story or memoir, whether you are just beginning to write, or grappling with final organization.

Write now: review your list of watershed or turning point memories if you have one, and make an inventory of stories that remain to be written. If you don’t have a list, start one. Add to it as more occur to you. 

Photo Credit: Simon Harriyott

It's Five O'Clock Somewhere

You’ve heard the saying “It’s five o’clock somewhere” used to justify an early cocktail hour. Likewise, on any given day, it’s somebody’s birthday. If you happen to read this on your special day,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO YOU!

I shall use your occasion to talk and write about birthdays and writing about them. Anyone who has a few years on their timeline has some birthdays that they remember more fondly than others. The fond memories may include parties — surprise or otherwise, special gifts, special celebrations. The not-so-fond ones may include passing dreaded milestones, generally ages ending in zeros. These occasions are worth writing about, as essays or stories.

One of my best birthdays was the year I turned 18 and my parents turned an ordinary gathering of friends into a really special event with a huge surprise: an ice cream birthday cake from Baskin Robbins.

Turning 21 was a real non-event. I had German measles. Besides, I was already married to a grad student, and we hardly had an extra nickle to celebrate, even if I hadn’t been sick.

On birthday 23, I decided to quit having birthdays. By late afternoon, nobody but my hubby had even wished me a happy one. No cards, no phone calls. (Not that anyone outside the family knew what day it was.) Just as I was imagining lighting a million candles on my pity party cake, my mom and brother drove up with a huge split leaf philodendron plant and redeemed the occasion. I made a resolution not to ever again let the absence of recognition spoil my birthday.

When 30 rolled around, I knew I was supposed to start feeling old or angst-ridden, but I couldn’t convince myself anything had changed, and hardly noticed. 40 was a different story. I’d always assumed that by the time I turned 40, the full extent of my astonishing wisdom would become appreciated. I expected all sorts of new respect and red carpets. To my horror, the day came and went, and not a thing changed. I was fell into a black pit of disappointment that lasted for weeks.

On number 41 I threw a dinner party for nearly 20 people, knowing it was the last year our family would all celebrate together for a long time, and my last chance to celebrate with friends in Richland. Nine days later we bought our house in Pittsburgh was accepted.

I threw my own party again to celebrate half a century. The next day I hopped on a plane and flew off to Seattle to meet our first grandchild.

Number 50 found me at an Elderhostel at the Volcano Center on The Big Island, joking that I was now old enough to be there unescorted.

I spent birthday number 60 in Austin with our daughter and her in-laws and moved on to celebrate Fiesta in San Antonio.

Last year I began celebrating my birthday high above the North Pole, arriving in Beijing before the day was over.

That’s the short list of my Big Birthday Moments story idea list. To do them justice will require pages and pages, with plenty of narrative to interject the meaning they held and hold for me as a time of transition, a season of beginnings and endings, and an occasion for gratitude. And then I shall decide whether to continue celebrating or swear off.

It's five o’clock somewhere, and somebody’s birthday to boot, and what a great excuse to celebrate now!

Write now: jot down a summary of your memorable birthdays, both good and bad. Include as many details as you can remember, food, drink, friends. Or maybe you spent some alone. Did you enjoy them or hate them? How d you feel about your age now? Let it all hang out. Then pick one specific birthday and write a proper story about it.

Triumph!

My heart goes pitter patter for a few seconds as we walk up to the ticket window at Cedar Point. I know I'm going to have to live up to the commitment I brazenly made in my last post. I can't imagine going on the first ride the fellows select—a pair of yellow towers seemingly seventy stories high that corkscrew straight up, then back down again. The second is just as bad, shooting up straight up a tower, then straight down the other side.

On the third coaster of the day, the Magnum XL 2000, I decide to just do it. I don't look at the track. Whatever it is, I'll do it. I settle into the seat next to Tosh, buckle up, and check out the hand grips.

“Grandma, I hope you can hang on.”

“Hang onto what, my breakfast?”

“No. A bar or something,” says this sage eleven-year-old. His concern is touching.

“You better believe I'll be hanging on!” I say, reassuring myself as much as him.

I do a quick scan for apprehension and feel surprisingly calm. Just then the cars start to move, beginning a climb up a slope that reaches beyond the range of my vision. I breathe deeply, look out at the landscape unfolding beneath our rapidly ascending perch, and hear people begin to scream. I'm still calm — this is preferable to thinking ahead!

We pause for a fraction of a second and suddenly I'm hurtling straight down, holding on for dear life. I scream because it's what you do. And I feel like screaming. It's not scary, but it is disorienting. The only thing I'm actively afraid of is being shaken to death. I feel like I'm on a buckboard racing across the Pony Express track. My head jerks in every direction as we go up, down, and around curves at 45º angles. An instant headache quickly escalates to a full throb, threatening to burst open and spew my brains all over the island. Up, down, around. We keep screaming along the track. Every muscle in my body is clenched, trying to hold my body together to avoid major damage.

In a mercifully short period of time, we pull back to the dock. I hop out with no sense of triumph. I'm too busy trying to relax my neck, hoping to ease the throbbing in my head, and the warning signals from a mildly twisted lumbar region.

I survived riding the Magnum XL 2000 in background.
Compared to many others, this is a kiddy park ride!

I decide I could ride again. I could ride anything in the park. I'm no longer afraid. I'm not afraid of surviving, even surviving sheer plunges of hundreds of feet, or the most severe loops. I can even imagine enjoying the experience. But I am afraid of the pain it's likely to entail. My body is no longer as forgiving as it was thirty or forty years ago.

In a flash, I realize that I no longer have anything to prove. I could do it. That's enough. I don't have to endure further pain to prove that. I declare myself the official photographer of our expedition, silently bless Cedar Point for their compassionate Senior Citizen admission fee, and feel victorious. This day is a milestone in my life, but not for the reason I expected.

Write now: about a personal victory over fear. Did it have a surprise ending? What about pain? Does that deter you? How do you adapt to the aging of your body and newly discovered limitations?

The End of the Beginning

Today I had the strongest sense of the end of a beginning. While I was in Austin for the Story Circle Network conference, I also got to spend some time with my youngest grandchild and her big sister. Anna is still a baby, cuddly sweet and always smiling. I swear, this baby smiles even when she's crying. She is so amazingly happy!

As I held her extra tight this morning, for one last time, breathing deeply of her sweetness, I realized this is probably the last time I will see her while she is an infant. Next time she's likely to be toddling around, trying to keep up with everyone and everything, with little interest in snuggling against Grannie's shoulder.

But this wasn't about the end of Anna's infancy. This is about the end of the Grandbaby era. One can never be sure, but I suspect our quota of grandchildren has been amply filled. In truth, each time I see any given one of them, I enjoy them a little more, and it's exciting to notice the way their minds and personalities are unfolding like beautiful flowers.

And yet, as I held Anna, although the context of the song and my situation were quite different, I heard a snippet of Roger Whittaker's song, The First Hello The Last Goodbye, “...the end of the beginning is the beginning of the end.” This was such a poignant moment, one to be much savored, and commemorated in writing.

Write now: about a sense of impending endings. Have you ever said a last goodbye to someone you know you'll never see again? How did you feel when your last child began school, or your nest was empty?

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

An Apple With a Difference

Can you imagine letting a 25th anniversary slide by unnoticed? I almost did that yesterday, but something tickled a neuron before the clock struck twelve. This event I remembered was a milestone, marking the beginning of what has become a remarkable lifestyle change for our whole family.

To put things in perspective, travel back in time with me to the evening of October 31, 1982. Immediately after supper, my husband took our older son out trick-or-treating. They only went one place, and acquiring the treat required a credit card imprint before they returned home with the loot: a single apple. This wasn’t just any old apple, it was an Apple ][+ computer, with dual external floppy disk drives, and an extra 24 K of memory. That’s right. That machine ran with a whopping 48 kilobytes of memory!

The main purpose of the purchase was to allow our son to scratch his itch to learn programming languages — he’d already mastered machine language so he could create new games for his Atari. He quickly became fluent in three languages and never lacked for odd programming jobs to supply extra cash during his college years before he began a rewarding career in chip design.

Everyone in the family enjoyed the Apple in one way or another, but to me, it was a dream-come-true. I’d long lusted for one of those magic word processing machines, but never mentioned the fact, because no way could I justify spending the equivalent of a semester's college tuition on such an indulgence. When I saw the Apple, I knew my prayers had been answered. By noon the next day I had become an expert in using AppleWriter, and transcended for all time the limitations of my trusty old Smith Corona portable electric.

Today we’d howl with laughter at the sight of that primitive old 13" green-on-black CRT monitor that showed programming codes right along with the text, sprawling uniformly from one screen edge to the other. Acres of trees and miles of printer ribbon substituted for the as-yet-unimagined WYSIWYG display. Any function change, like bold, italic or margin adjustments, had to be entered as a “dot code,” similar to HTML coding, within the text itself. It was invisible in the printed document, but did affect line length, creating some wildly ragged right margins. But oh, the power, to be able to cut and paste, and edit documents without retyping. Sheer magic!

It’s been a long road from there to the ability to lay out press-ready books to the most exacting professional standards, mixing graphics and text, right on my own computer. My personal computer today has more power than a Super Computer did back then.

Then there is the Internet, connecting me with all of you, and the world at large. There is the change in my time use. Many things I used to enjoy have sat idle for months or more.

Yes, yesterday marked an anniversary of something truly momentous, and I can no more guess what additional changes computers are going to make in my life over the next twenty-five years than I could have predicted today’s scenario back in 1982.

A couple of years ago I began a chronicle of my experience with computers over this quarter century. Maybe it's time to pull it out and add a few more.

Write now: About your early experiences with computers. What was your first? Your favorite? What programs have you loved and hated? Did you ever have system failure? How did you learn? What are your feelings about computers, and how have they changed over the years? How has the availability of a computer affected your writing?

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Ta Dah! The Book Is Here

Today marks a major milestone for me. The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing: How to Transform Memories into Meaningful Stories hits the shelves. Let me fill you in on some back story and features of the book.

This book evolved from a growing pile of handouts I made over the last several years. After several years, many overlapped, formatting was inconsistent, and trying to figure out which handout to use for what group had become a headache, so I decided to consolidate all the handouts in a unified collection. I had it printed at the local UPS copy shop, directly from disk, an economical approach I highly recommend. That original volume was over one hundred full-size pages, and cumbersome to reprint. The obvious solution was a formal book.

In 1994 Lighthouse Point Press published my previous book, Meetings: Do’s, Don’ts and Donuts. That book went into a second edition, and we enjoyed working together so much that I contacted them about this new project, which they were also enthusiastic about — and here we are now.

The decision to compile this book was not made easily. There were already dozens of excellent books on the topic of writing memoir and lifestory, and I’ve read most of them. Each has a slightly different view of the process. Some are general, and others focus more narrowly, for example on writing to heal. None gave a comprehensive overview of the entire process of producing a finished lifestory volume. I decided to address that void.

The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing takes you down intertwining paths: planning and writing. Rather than prescribing a single approach, I show the elements of the process, from defining a purpose, listing story ideas, writing, editing, compiling a story collection and deciding how to print it.

Although you obviously can’t print unwritten stories, many elements can be done randomly (or skipped entirely), and interspersed with writing. You’ll find guidelines for selecting a path through this wilderness that will get you where you want to go, whether that’s to simply write a few spontaneous stories, complete a life-overview, or something in between. This is your story, and you must write it your way. This book is your road atlas with a full range of highways and byways.

A “heart” section on writing the initial story follows the planning section. The rest of the book is devoted to the “craft” of editing, rewriting and organizing collections. Most common grammar and punctuation questions are answered, with reference to further resources.

Just as the beginning is unique in providing a map rather than a list of steps, the final section includes information not found in other books. It is devoted to helping you work with your computer. Detailed instructions are included for selecting page size, setting margins, adjusting line height, choosing readable fonts, inserting graphics, using headers and footers, and more. Whether you use Microsoft Word, OpenOffice, or WordPerfect, you’ll find user-tested lists of steps necessary to complete each task. Instructions are specific enough to guide you through the necessary steps, and include a strong conceptual basis so if you have a somewhat older or newer version, you should still be able to follow along.

You’ll also find guidelines to help you decide whether to print copies on your own printer, use a copy shop, or upload your file to a Print-On-Demand publisher such as Lulu.com.

My purpose in writing this book was to help demystify the sometimes intimidating process, not only of writing, but sharing your lifestories with family, friends and maybe even the world. I’ve done my part. The book is there. I hope it will put wind under the wings of your writing, and perhaps you can use it to encourage others to start writing with you.

May your stories flow strongly and steadily! Please drop me an e-mail at Ritergal@gmail.com and let me know how it goes.

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

The Sweet, Sweet Taste of Victory

It’s time to celebrate a new arrival. For weeks I’ve been working on building a website. These weeks follow a few months of avoidance, procrastination, and other forms of writer's block. Initially I thought I knew enough HTML and CSS (if you need to ask, you don’t want to know) to pull one together in a reasonably short period of time, say a couple of days.

Suffice it to say that as I began the journey through my out-dated web editing program, into some open-source freebies, and out the other end into a bare-bones text-editor with absolutely no frills, and concurrently through dozens of pages of on-line tutorials, CSS reference pages, and an actual printed-on-paper book of HTML instruction, I was certain I saw a white rabbit running before me. I lost sleep over links that wouldn’t work, bum style codes, and a host of other problems.

As recently as last night, I was ready to throw an ax through my computer tower. “I don’t need this grief! The world doesn’t need this page!” I wailed. In spite of my determination to remain calm and patient, the stress level soared.

Fortunately, a good night’s sleep worked wonders. Today I managed to get the errant codes calmed down, get the files moved from my hard drive onto the website that has been sitting empty for a couple of months, and you are invited to the unveiling of a major milestone in my recent life:

www.sharonlippincott.com

You’ll notice that the site name is The Heart and Craft of Life Writing. You may wonder where the story went. I went visionary and purposely left the S word out. As is the case with many types of projects, when you walk a few miles down the road, you round a bend or two and see new vistas. I see now that life writing is a more inclusive term than life story writing.

Life writing is any form of writing that springs from real experience, your own or others. It encompasses forms of writing that technically are not stories. For example, writing private pieces for healing, not sharing. Family histories are life writing. Personal essays are life writing, though technically, they are not stories. Life writing can even include fictionalized accounts drawn from your own experience or that of family members.

The Heart and Craft of Life Writing is built on a broad foundation to last for many years. I intend it to be a resource-rich site, where you can easily find links to helpful references, read stories and articles. I plan to have articles from a number of writers. I get enough writing practice with this blog! As time goes on, there should be some podcasts too.

Whether you’ve knitted an afghan, run a marathon, given birth, or finished a manuscript or website, the taste of victory is sweet. It makes the pain seem worthwhile when you've managed to overcome all the obstacles mankind, the universe and your own mind place in your path.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Countdown: Three more days until the official release of The Heart and Craft of Lifestory Writing. But you don’t need to wait. Amazon has already begun shipping copies.

Take Care of Your Heart First

To my own amazement, I just noticed that the first anniversary of this blog flew by unnoticed by Yours Truly a week ago today. In 53 weeks, I've produced 117 posts. When you consider that for various reasons, there were six weeks when I didn't post at all, that's an average of about two-and-a-half per week, which is right on target for the two-to-three per week I aimed for.

If you've been following the blog for awhile, you may have noticed gaps. There was a gap of nearly a month last summer while I was on vacation. A more recent gap and general slow down has been due to the event generating “The story that must not be written.” The unfolding story remains intense and stressful for all concerned.

In such stressful times, it's difficult to garner creative energies. It's not so much a matter of writer's block as preoccupation and lower energy levels. I can still sit down and write about other things, but it takes more energy, and my endurance is definitely affected. I can't concentrate for hours at a time as I generally do.

My situation is only unique in specific content. No matter how organized they are, anyone working on a longterm life story writing project is going to hit similar times. Perhaps it's a personal illness. Perhaps someone in the family has a health crisis requiring lots of time and attention. Perhaps things at work hit panic levels, or a love affair heads south.

During these times you are likely to have days when sitting down to write is simply more than you can face. What should you do? Back off! Be kind to yourself. Don't quit entirely, but keep your efforts simple. Jot a few notes. Go through your story ideas. Spend a few minutes editing an old story.

Make yourself a promise to get back to your schedule by a certain date. Write that date on your calendar. If the time comes and the situation hasn't eased, renegotiate. Yes, you'll lose momentum and fall behind schedule, but worse things have happened. Your stories come from your heart, and when your heart is elsewhere, your stories won't flow well. Take care of your heart first, and the stories will return.

Having written that, I've discovered anew that as long as I was thinking of you and writing this message for you, I have remained focused, and the words have flowed. Perhaps that's the key: My love and concern for you, my readers, is strong enough to overcome my preoccupation and restores my sense of joy in writing. My heart has reengaged with writing.

Give it a try. Think of those you love and focus on giving them the joy of reading your story. That joy will flow forth from some eternal well and uplift your spirit as well as theirs.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal

Major Milestones

Everyone has major milestones in their lives, like graduating from high school or college, getting married, winning an award or contest, buying a first car, meeting a celebrity, and so forth. I passed a major milestone today: I became the grandmother of a teenager! That’s almost, but not quite, as startling as becoming the mother of a forty-year-old, or turning forty myself.

When these major milestones occur, it’s natural to think back to corresponding events. Today I tried to remember my own thirteenth birthday. I remember the excitement of looking forward to becoming a teenager, but try as I might, I do not remember the actual event. And, though I blush to admit, I do not remember the specific birthdays when my children became teenagers. These were big days at the time, but the memory does not linger on.

You probably have similar lapses of your own.

What does this have to do with writing lifestories? This incident of mine merely underscores the fact that we don’t remember the details of every event in our lives, especially as they fade into the distance. Becoming a teenager was important to me, and I remember generalities, though I don’t remember the specific day.

Perhaps that’s not surprising. I just searched for “perpetual calendar” and looked up the date of my thirteenth birthday. It fell on a Tuesday, which means it was a school day. That means I found a present or two by my place on the breakfast table, and we had birthday cake after supper. That was predictable, and would blend into my composite Birthday Memory. If I’d had a party, I would remember that. I did have a sixteenth birthday party. My friends and I didn't have birthday parties, and they continued to be rare when my own children were growing up.

When I write about it, I’ll write about my general feelings, not an occasion. When I write about becoming the mother of teenagers, I’ll write about the challenges of adolescence in general, making note of the fact that I had three very different experiences with three very different children. Vital, compelling stories are about experiences and interpretations as much or more than actual events.

Happy birthday Keith. I’m going to remember this day, for sure, and I’ll remember the thirteenth birthday of each successive grandchild. Somehow major milestones in grandchildren’s lives stand out with special vividness. I think that’s part of being a grandparent.

For now I’m encouraging my readers who are grandparents to write stories about the major moments as they occur, as keepsakes for the youngsters, who may not otherwise remember themselves. Likewise, younger parents will do well to keep journals, no matter how sporadic or sketchy. Anything you write is going to be welcome later.

Write on,

Sharon Lippincott, aka Ritergal