Sunday, September 21, 2014

Recording Your Fondest Memories About Grandma


My wife and I reminisced about our grandparents today.  My paternal grandmothergrandfather died long before I was born and both of my grandmothers died when I was five.  I only have a single memory of each of them.  My longer surviving grandfather wasn't involved in my life to any degree but at least I have mental images of him that are replete with audio and video.

As grandparents, my wife and I have tried to be active in the lives of our grandchildren.  Along with our children, they are our true treasures.
 
This week I have spent time this week tutoring some of them in math, in the use of cloud apps, answering their questions about life and Elmering one of them as a prospective ham radio operator.  Only a few of them have been physically present but with Google Hangouts the rest have only been a couple of clicks away.

At the end of the week, they reported back with great scores on tests, tales of successfully wowing their teachers with their mastery of cloud based apps and even a newly minted amateur radio operator.

My wife and I try to make memories with our children and grandchildren.  It doesn't involve a lot of money.  I just involves giving them our time, attention, sharing a little knowledge and of course some laughs.

Our granddaughters love their art, sewing, cooking and crafting stay overs with grandma.  Our grandsons enjoy the art lessons as well but tend to enjoy building rockets, paracord weaving, camp fire cooking, amateur radio operation and genealogy research projects with me.

Recently, FamilySearch announced a campaign to gather and record your fondest grandma stories.  Because my grandmothers died when I was so young, I don’t have any fond personal memories about them.   My wife only has a one or two about her grandmothers because they too died when she was a relatively young girl.  We wish we had known them better.  We would have recorded our memories of them.  Hopefully, our grandchildren will engage in the FamilySearch campaign and record their fondest memories of their grandmothers.

I’ve read that after the third generation, basically all family stories are forgotten if they aren't written down.  I wish I had the life stories of all of my grandparents rather than just their basic birth, marriage, death and similar facts.   When I do find life story information about them, it almost gives me more joy than finding their names when their associated brick research wall crumbles.

I’m sure that stories about the lives of your ancestors are equally exciting to you as well.

Are you going to take the opportunity to record your fondest memories of your grandmothers along with tens of thousands of others?  The FamilySearch initiative runs from September 20 - 30th.  Why not take the time to join in and write or record the stories.  Share them with your family and if you’d like share them with others by posting them to their records on Family Tree on FamilySearch.  I hope some of my older cousins record their memories of our common grandmothers and post them now.  They haven’t done so before but maybe the FamilySearch initiative will be the enticement that sparks their interest.   #MeetMyGrandma




Posted 21 Sep 2014 by Lee R. Drew on Lineagekeeper’s Genealogy Blog