Connecting to the future by recording the past

OUR grandchildren live in Chicago. And however much I resign myself to the distance, it’s still hard. Trying to read a story or play “peebo” over Zoom isn’t the same. I miss the cuddles, bath times, sharing in their lives.

Instant communication, if anything, makes me realise what we’re missing more than ever. As millions of parents in the world know too well, parachuting into one another’s lives doesn’t create the same bonding, doesn’t fulfil that all-too-important role of being a grandparent.

Our four-year-old grandson thinks we live “on holiday” because the only time he can remember visiting was when his family visited us one summer on vacation.

I never knew three of my grandparents. I wish I knew more about them, wish I could find a book on my shelf that one of them had written, one that gave real insight into their lives. It would be so interesting to glimpse into their activities, maybe even recognise characteristics in me, handed down through the gene pool.

During dry January my memory has sharpened considerably. I can now tie my shoelaces without an instruction book and I’m grateful to be able to recall all sorts of trivia. So on the assumption that our grandchildren are unlikely to know us very well, I’ve started writing a book for them while I can remember things. It’s turning out to be very interesting.

When my Mum died, I immediately had questions that only she could answer about family events. I’m hoping future generations will find answers about our lives through the pages of this book. It details Hubs, childhood, our jobs, homes, adventures and stories going as far back as I can. I doubt for a minute my children will read it, but I’m hoping, just

A pile of old photos is organised, shedding light on the family for generations ahead hoping that it might sit on a cloud one day (next to me perhaps!) and be opened and read in many decades to come so that those family members will know their forebears through the written word.

Books need pictures. So I’ve undertaken a mammoth task, to collate and document hundreds and hundreds of very old family photographs, using some for the book. My Dad was an inveterate photographer and had his own darkroom where, as a child, I would stand, enthralled, watching pictures emerge, as if by magic from a piece of paper floating in a tray of developer.

The photographs are fascinating. But who on earth is going to see them, however carefully I log them and put them in albums? I don’t know. But I do know they’ve got more chance of being seen than all the 8,000 photographs I’ve got on my phone and desktop.

There’s nothing better than being able to capture the moment with your phone, but it is literally a moment. Maybe a quick flash round social media, never to be seen again. When I pop my clogs, who’s going to grab my phone and say “Let’s spend the next month of our lives looking at pictures of places and people even though half of them mean nothing to us?” Absolutely no one.

It’s the same with emails. Wherever I travel I write (wrote) my experiences down as an email. Will anyone plough through those to read about a time I spent in Buenos Aires or wherever? Of course they won’t.

Travelling pre-email, I committed all my thoughts to letters which I posted home. The fat blue airmail bundles were put into a box and stayed there for years. Recently I read some of them and they made me laugh out loud, made me thoughtful, and I resolved to get them typed up. A chunk of them are written when I travelled the USA for a year in the 70’s with a girlfriend. Most of them were written on airmail letters, spidery writing squeezing in those essential last words on the sticky fold or on the “do not write above this” bit. As I read them now, I realise what a reflection they were on the US in those days, unlocked by the adventures of two young girls graduating from Aspen ski bums to driving round in a VW camper that cost us $750 and broke down in every one of the 31 states we visited.

The adventures are interesting all these years on and I’ve decided to turn them into a book – maybe not in the same league as Steinbeck’s Travel’s with Charley, when he too took to the road in a van with his big black poodle – but it will resonate with many I’m sure.

The chance of writing a book from emails – if they had existed then – would simply not happen. I wouldn’t have the patience or the ability to have logged them somewhere where I would find them again. No, they would have been lost to posterity, along with any pictures on a phone.

But before I log my American memories, I’m creating some for future kids I’ll never meet. But at least they can know about us in a tome sitting on a shelf that will be read, connecting generations through its pages for years to come.

I’m hoping that it might sit on a cloud one day (next to me perhaps!) and be opened and read in decades to come

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