Turn-the-page Stories
A grandmother told me how she sometimes became part of a story to her very young and distant grandchild. She wrote:
I audiotape the story and mail the book to him along with the cassette,' she wrote, 'but there's more to it than that. In recording, when I get to the end of a page, I talk about the illustrations on that page, and then say 'turn the page'. He loves this part and tells his Mom that he wants to listen to Grandma's 'turn the page' book. When children are too young to read by themselves, they can follow along independently when you tell them-on the tape-when it's time to 'turn the page.'
Record Your Albums
Inquiries I've received from too-faraway grandparents include audio taping stories, family lore and anecdotes, especially family history. Several commented that talking was easier for them than writing.
In my responses I told about the time and circumstances that I had taped a commentary to our family's photo and document album, and how I went about it.
For almost 40 years my wife and I, and before they left for college, our children, moved about the United States and the world, working and living our lives. We had accumulated a fair number of photos and documents over the years; they were important parts of our family history.
During those active years, family archives were low priority. During periods of relative quiet we reminded ourselves to organize our records, add notes on the reverse sides of photos and important documents, and file them away in albums. As with most families, my wife had all the names, dates, places, and the why and how details catalogued and stored in her mind. We thought we had plenty of time. We did not.
Months after the tragedy, when I was able to focus my thoughts again, one of my many tasks was to gather the cartons, shoeboxes and envelopes of photos and documents. I spread them across every available clear space and tried to make sense of the lot. Many, from past generations, were scenes from the early part of the twentieth century and before. I separated the collection into two groups: Group One: preceding our meeting and marriage, and Group Two: our life together and those who became a part of it.
Group One went into albums as Part A: my wife before we met and her side of the family, and Part B: the same for me and mine. I arranged Group Two (our married life) into collections according to the places where we had resided. The result had many sections.