Obscure memories…because I can

Writing again. Someone once asked if I just “had to write”? Nope, but I write because I can. I’ve discovered I remember my English grammar lessons, and I can spell. So it’s a no-brainer for me…I can write, so I do. But I am not driven to write. I’m driven to collect data, information, history…memories. The only way to preserve all of that is through writing. Of course, I could record it or video myself talking to myself or some unknown audience, but that doesn’t do it for me. I need to “write it down.” And I need to encourage other people to write it down, so it’s not lost. You wouldn’t want your family to lose the memories of a favorite loved one or forget they existed or how they contributed to the family history…so write it down! I want my family to know the great love I had for spending days with my great aunts and uncles. I want them to know how special my grandmother was….at least to me. I want them to know some of the favorite pastimes of these people and how life has changed since they were around or when they were younger. It was such a simpler time their childhood and mine. No electronics to rob our time…just time to do ….things! My grandmother (Nannie) loved a card game called Flinch. I don’t know if it even exists today, but she taught it to me to play with her. And, of course, I’ve long since forgotten how to play or even what the cards looked like except that worn blue stack that she kept handy. My Great Uncle Gene loved to play dominoes with me. He is the only one I ever remember playing with, he and his wife, my Aunt Della. I spent whole days with them. They were well into their 70s. Uncle Gene would walk to town in Rockport with me to pick up some groceries for lunch…whatever I wanted. Pork chops were usually my favorite, but maybe we had fishsticks a few times. He liked to introduce me to the shopkeepers that he knew…there were grocery stores along Main Street in the 1960s. I think he was pleased that this 12 or 14 year-old girl had come to spend the day with them and actually enjoyed it! When I was even younger, he would go out and play baseball with me! And take me in his old truck to visit his Lincolnville garden at his cousin’s place, Colb’ Wiley. I later learned that it was Colburn Wiley named after his mother ‘s family. Uncle Gene kept ducks or geese under the buildings at 18 Park Street (Camden), and a garden in the backyard, but there was a bigger garden in Lincolnville. Colb lived at the corner of the Moody Mountain Road and Route 235…called the Hope Road now? Obscure memories now, but it’s this type of detail that is lost when we don’t write it down or capture it for a future generation. Did you garden as a child? Did you work with an elderly relative or a favorite cousin? Did they have strange or old customs that aren’t observed now? Do you want your children to know those people and how they lived and what they contributed to your life, and perhaps may be the reason you do some of the things you do? It’s simple….write it down!

Harvest your memories

It would be great to get that dependability bug. You know the one where you do what you're expected to do, or expect yourself to do, when you're expected to do it. In retirement that seems to have escaped me, even tho' I do get a bunch done. The last post to this page was in the spring, just before planting season. And now, here we are, and it's harvest season...not that I have to worry about that much...rotten garden results this year. One more year and if it doesn't get better, I'm done...back to the grocery freezer section or hopefully supporting local farmers' markets. Harvest season brings about many traditions and perhaps starts new ones for some. Is this the time you are harvesting or remembering harvests in the past? What do you remember, or how do you observe a harvest season? Is it something your family has always done or something you plan to share with your children or grandchildren? This year, I hope to revive our "boiled dinner day." If not in the same way or the same famiy members, at least to not let the fall pass without hosting a boiled dinner in the crisp fall air. In the past, our extended family would gather at the family camp (where we now live) to help us close up for the season. Many of them got to use the camp during the summer months, and this gathering was a way to gather more help for the many tasks, as well as celebrate the end of another season, sharing the new memories of the season, and perhaps seasons past. Harvest time can be a rich time of memory making whether it's an actual harvest, a regular fall gathering or multiple trips to fall sports events. What is it you want to capture from those memories and how will you do it? Do you need to do it? This is yet another fall if you haven't captured the memories of past fall events or an aging member of your family. This is a reminder, to me and hopefully to anyone else reading this to capture it....write it down, save or copy old photos, maybe tackle or update a scrapbooking project. If you haven't done any of this, maybe this is the year to start. It's never too late, if you can just get started. One memory preserved is simply that one memory, but it can snowball (sorry for the wintery reminder) and help you continue the journey. You can preserve your memories or those of family members or start a collection of family history for the next generation to share, simply....Write it Down. Like me don't worry so much about what you'll do for your next task, begin with this memory, this season.

Time to Grow again

Spring has sprung or so the date on the calendar says. Yet in central Maine there is still an abundant snow cover and the lakes are deeply frozen. It will be interesting to see if it’s weeks or a month or more before we actually see buds or blossoms poking through the soil. For the rest of the country apparently, it is spring. My friends are posting pictures of spring buds, talking about signs of green grass and thinking about preparing for planting. How soon do people actual start planning? I know die-hard gardeners plan ALL winter with diagrams, seed catalogs and research. I’m just not one of them. I think I feel obligated to grow, simply because I can. I was brought up that way. There was always a garden in the backyard. My family couldn’t get through a year without planning for fresh veggies, and spending the rest of the summer and fall preserving them. Did it really help the budget that much? Or was it just the pure love of fresh veggies? In part I think it was the ultimate bargain for my mother. A few cents spent for seeds translated to saved dollars on the weekly grocery bill. It filled the expensive freezer….which is still freezing MORE than 50 years after it was first plugged in! What did your family do for gardening or preserving vegetables, fruits or meat? Are there memories associated with that? I can remember hot summer afternoons and a few mornings spent on the sun porch “snipping” beans…pounds of them! Only to be followed by a long evening blanching them in boiling water and quickly cooling them in ice water to be bagged for the freezer. I think that memory contributes to my love of green beans more than any other vegetable, but cooked properly and thoroughly, as part of a veggie-laden winter meal. I don’t recall that we were often allowed into the garden to actually pick, but perhaps as we became more trustworthy and older. I remember a few times helping place the seeds into the row, but I wasn’t always careful enough to get that right and so I gather I wasn’t often asked. I remember digging potatoes in the fall, even getting my school clothes too dirty on one occasion because I failed to change when I got home…heading to the garden too soon. Extra veggies were always delegated to the "veggie stand" on the front lawn, that actually was an old table from the "play house" behind the barn and a folding lawn chair. I think we sold cucumbers at five cents a piece or six for a quarter. Could that be possible? Were they really that cheap or is my memory forgetting the real price? Either way the sale of veggies, tomatoes, cucumbers maybe beans or potatoes, and of course, corn, supplemented the back-to-school budget so we had funds for a new fall wardrobe. There was a science to it and I gather I absorbed it rather than “learned” it, because a lot of it stays with me today. I plant the way I “know” how just because it feels right. More recently I’ve studied gardening mostly to reassure myself I’m doing it right, I think. Then I don’ t remember what I know and what I’ve learned. Guess it doesn’t make any difference if the plants grow and produce. Then again I keep questioning, why I do this? Because I can or because I know what I’m doing or because of the memories it brings to mind. You must have memories of summer gardening and growing. Have you written them down? There's that reminder again....Write it Down!

February rant....cabin fever delusions

It’s Refund Season according to a television ad! Get your billions back, I’m told. If only…. It’s never that simple and there is not always a refund. By the time you get all the right information together, you’ve earned whatever Might be coming back, if anything. Still we all scramble to get the numbers together, added up, all the paper that substantiates the numbers and all the inane questions answered to document Any change from the previous year. I’m sure younger people, more mobile people, have “stuff” to claim for change or refunds or whatever they may need. Maybe they can keep better track of it than I do. Maybe they are more like I used to be…organized. When did I become disorganized? Am I more disorganized than I used to be? Or do I simply not remember what I’ve organized? That’s always a worthy new year’s resolution: get organized! Well I’ll never call it a resolution, but it is a goal, if not for my financial well-being then for my mental well-being! It would help immensely if I could simply find what I forgot to organize and remember what I did organize. Is that aging? Slowly I’m clearing files, physical and digital. I’m finding things I didn’t know I had, and certainly not why I saved them in the first place. There are keepsakes, thousands of pictures, and just plain stuff you keep because someone said you should keep everything seven years or is it 10 or just three? Well we are double up on most of those years, so out it goes this year…this spring, if not this winter. And there’s not a lot of time left, if I’m to clear out the clutter or saved “stuff” from winter. And that’s the rule IF we haven't used it, needed it or remembered it in a year or more likely two years-plus, it can go! Sale-able “stuff” will be sold or donated. Other stuff that should be stuff for someone else to take care of will be going their way. The rest is likely just junk, and trashy junk at that. Does that constitute a resolution, a plan or just another annual rant? Time will tell. Wish me luck!

Christmas is coming! As if you needed to be reminded, huh? But now starts the dilemma...what to give everyone. There's always the latest and greatest gadget or toy. What will it be this year? Technology has reigned in recent years as we've given new computers, tablets, cellphones, DVRs, all kinds of new gadgets and of course there are new kitchen gadgets to consider. There must be a better breadmaker by now or a bigger griddle or crockpot. But those are just things. Anyone can give things. You can give memories. You can collect all your favorite family recipes into a book or scrapbook. There are programs to help you do it on the computer; websites to put it together professionally and publish it for you or your family members. But don't discount the appreciation you might get from a simple typed copy of family recipes in a three-ring binder. You can decorate the cover, of course. Your local print or copy shop can compile a dozen, two dozen or more pages into a spiral bound book, insert family photos, or even make recipes coincide with a new calendar. My first family cookbook was nothing more than three copies, handwritten, of each of our favorite recipes and placed in a small binder for each chosen family member who had enjoyed the recipes over time. I'm not up to that again...especially that handwritten part. It's so much easier to type your recipes into the computer and print off multiple copies. Or if you really want to get creative, try one of the many photo sites that offer photobooks. You write the pages with their software or you can insert your copies and your pictures into their pages. Add some digital embellishments, just as you would with a cut and paste scrapbook...but so much easier when it's done for you. Then you have the option of buying multiple copies for each member of the family. If you're one of those scrappers, now is the time to start crafting your pages, whether it's for a special recipe and the pictures of your grandson helping put it together or simply chowing down on the latest serving. Your family will love re-living the activity, revisiting the special memories of your recipes or family get-togethers. But putting together a book of memories doesn't have to be a cookbook. Maybe it's all of grandpa's fishing stories or a collection of grandma's quilts or a collection of family reunion pictures over the years. Maybe you or someone in your family has compiled the family tree. Does everyone have a copy? is it up-to-date? We've all lamented that pictures aren't printed out so much anymore. We all have files and files stored away on a computer somewhere. Maybe this Christmas the family deserves a yearbook of all of the years events and get-togethers. And yes, if you can't figure out how to put together those memories that's where a personal historian or lifestory instructor can help. Maybe they don't even need that title, many freelancers are very comfortable interviewing and compiling the family data, with your help, of course. Let one of us help you. But, time is wasting....don't delay, we may work well under pressure, but we prefer not to, of course...Christmas is coming!

Why write? because I can!

I've been asked "why write a blog?' The standard answer should be "why not?" I've told people I don't write because I "have to write". I'm not that driven. But I write because I can. For some reason, I have been blessed with the ability to put words together and not be fearful that they don't sound just right. People worry too much about how they sound when they put words to paper or simply express themselves publicly. If you have something to say, don't you just say it? Isn't that what your writing should be? Yes that's a question for you...Your writing! That means you should write as much as anyone. Write what you want, when you want. If you fantasize being a great novelist, go for it. But if you just want to write a personal diary, do it. Don't just think about it. I know I'm hung up on recording history, sharing history and that means sharing life. We're doing it every day on Facebook now, why wouldn't you simply collect those posts to reflect on your day, your year or your life? I want my children and grandchildren to reflect on my life as to why I did or didn't do certain things. My values, my beliefs. No, I don't expect them to copy my lifestyle, but to borrow from what works for them. I've had some great experiences and some not so great, and I can't spend my every waking moment trying to relay those to the people I love and care for, but I can write down my thoughts and beliefs to share with anyone interested. That’s where my blog comes in. It’s an attempt to share my thoughts, my experiences and still try to motivate others to do the same thing, or even better, let me help them Write It Down! I recently noticed my friend and instructor Denis Ledoux is offering a sale on a Memoir starter package. You can find out more https://www.facebook.com/MemoirNetwork It’s a place to start, so you can write what you feel needs to be written to leave a legacy for your family, friends or who ever.

I write IN books!

I write in books. That’s a confession. Several years ago, I figured out if I want to write in MY books, I can! And you should, too. I know, I know, we’ve been so ingrained since childhood—parents, teachers, librarians…never, never write in books! Why not? Wouldn’t you like to have a previous reader point out the good parts? To highlight good recipes or correct confusing or misleading directions? I actually started with my cookbooks. When they are handed down or handed off, the next cook will know what are good recipes, favorites, or adjustments that made my special recipe special! I think it started when I noticed a few typos or omissions in my favorite cookbooks…like salt! Or sugar! When you’re reading the recipe (that’s not just the list of ingredients), and it says when to mix in the salt…that wasn’t mentioned in the list of ingredients…that could be crucial! Or the one where the list calls for two tablespoons of cinnamon, but only teaspoons in the directions? Critical information, right? But it’s more than that. It’s communications, sometimes across generations and it’s your legacy. I love community cookbooks, where you see a great recipe and it’s submitted by a dear friend or just an acquaintance, or maybe it tells a few key facts about the cook who submitted it. That’s communication, preserving something special that that person thought enough of to submit for a fundraiser. It becomes part of who they are or were. My grandmother never thought of writing down her stories, or certainly not a whole memoir of her life. But the fact that she submitted a Mock Apple Pie recipe ( made with Ritz crackers) to her Grange cookbook reminds me of her ways, of the hard life she had. Who in these times of excess would think of a need for a “mock apple pie?” Yet she made it and apparently liked it. I love the part where the recipe calls for “a piece of butter”…..that’s not a teaspoon or a tablespoon, but a piece! If any of your ancestors submitted favorite recipes to a community fundraiser cookbook, I’ll bet you have a copy or your parents do. It reminds us of the times we shared that recipe, sat around the table or the back porch sharing family stories and good times. This is not advice to submit to community cookbooks, but a recommendation to leave your legacy with your things. Notes with your appliance instruction books, of how or why a special technique worked; in your cookbooks, when you changed a recipe or served it to special people or for events. My family has a quiche recipe we use every year for Christmas. It’s call “Christmas Quiche” by us, not necessarily the rest of the world. If you loved Gone with the Wind or a book of poems, why not say so inside the book cover or over a special passage. Many people highlight their favorite passages in their Bible. It tells a story of who we are, and in the case of later years, of who we were. You may not be a scrapbook-er, or a family historian. You may never write a whole memoir, but you can leave a legacy with the things you use or enjoyed every day. They could be simply notes to you for now, of how or why something works better a certain way, but it will tell your descendants of the person you were and how you lived.