Sharing Memories

I got a call from my daughter today that touched me deeply. I hadn't mentioned to her that I was writing a blog, but last night, alone for while, she went on line and found a link to this blog site. She sounded a bit tearful as she said, "I learned things about my Mom that I never knew."

"And what was that?" I asked thinking about 'Railroader's Daughter.'

"You never talked about your childhood." She said. "About living along the tracks. I learned things about my Grandfather and your life with him. And it touched me, Mom. You know I don't really read a lot, but I read that and it touched me."

"What made you read it, then?" I asked.

"The way you write, Mom. You should really be writing. You are good. The way you write caught and held my attention."

I hung up thinking more about what she had said about not knowing much about my childhood. While we are busy raising children we often set aside the memories of our own childhood. And while they are young, they are too busy learning, growing up and having fun to be curious about it or ask questions. It is not, sadly, until many years later that we turn our attention to our heritage and history and often it is too late to learn much of it.

Many times, we talked of writing the story of our parent's lives, but somehow we were always too busy to take the time. I am fortunate to have this precious time with my father to listen and write. How I wish I could turn back the hands of time and do the same with my Mother. Most of her stories are gone with her.

I remember coming home to visit while I was pregnant with my daughter. My son was six years old and before we arrived, I warned him that his Grandmother liked to talk about her past. "Be patient with her. Listen politely or tell her you are tired, but be respectful."

The first night, I came into the livingroom where the couch was made out for a bed for him. Mom sat on the edge of the bed telling stories about World War II. "Son, don't you think it's a little late?" I asked.

He looked at me, a bit irritated, I noted. "Shshsh, Mom! Gramma's telling me stories!" He exclaimed and I realized that he was genuinely interested. It was the last time I interupted their bedtime story time. But it also brought back memories of other nights and night time stories.

Dad was gone a lot during the summer months on some railroad gang. Eastern Montana summers were often hot and generated violent thunder storms that struck in the night. Large windows were set in either end of the long combined dining/living room. When a storm drew near, lightening lit up the night sky like daylight and thunder rattled windows and woke us all up. We children would get up and stand momentarily in the doorway from our rooms until darkness took over between lightening flashes and then make a mad dash for the kitchen and then rush to the haven of Mom and Dad's bedroom. There we all piled onto the bed, Mom turned on a lamp and sat up to regale us with stories of her childhood in England, meeting Dad there during World War II and her own war stories living through bomb raids and working in a factory. When the storm abated, the thunder had faded into the distance and the lightening was back on the distant horizon, we reluctantly crawled off the bed and went back to our own.

How often I have thought that I should sit down and write my own stories, in my own words. What will I do with them and who cares, I wonder. When I look back over the years, I don't see much that would hold anyone's interest, but then I listen to Dad and know how many of us care and want to know more. My daughter's words gave me food for thought about my own past. Then I smile to recall the words I had heard so many times over the years driving a tour bus through Alaska and the Yukon - "You have led such an interesting life, you should write a book!"

Maybe some day I will