How will my children ever know everything passed down, mother-to-child and are we passing down the right stuff? What stuff is important? She (and my dad) arrive at my house NYC bird perch this afternoon. I'm just all in a flit and twitter.
She's never been to NYC. I've had to tell my parents what to wear (strong street shoes). I've pulled out my daughter's give-away spare rain boots (she had to buy 3 when we moved here) for Mother. She'll appreciate that as she's so frugal (and archival to the point of extreme) that she gives my children as gifts things I'd thrown out as a teenager and thought I'd never see again.
Being formal, she prefers to be called Mother and Grandmother. Oh, we are so tied to our moms. Mom. I'm surprising myself at the things I've been doing in preparation (and my urge so write about it because it reminds me how fundamentally moms shape us forever). School studies and family obligations have dominated my time the past weeks, but everything seems to loop back to mom and her impending visit. Mother could entertain the Queen of England at any time. One of my weekly chores as a child was polishing all her silver so I've tried to shine the little I have.
The Important Stuff: She'll see little of the stuff because there just isn't room for it. She was the historian, the archivist, the geneologist and she passed it all to me. So many scrapbooks, notebooks, framed photos and geneology and memoriabilia things are in storage. How will things be "passed on" in the digital age? Jill at Legacy Matters wrote two days ago about Writing a Memoir or Family History with several good links and she wrote, "Memoir is the genre that gives credibility to our deepest feelings." I think many of the mom bloggers are writing their own memoirs through blogs and they should be considered in the genre "memoir blooks" (a blook is a published blog). The Lulu Blooker Prize was first blook prize, awarded in 2006. I became aware of this new cultural "thing" when Riverbend, 26, of the Bagdad Burning blog won a 2003 French literary prize for her blog writings compiled as the book, Bagdad Burning, Girl Blog from Iraq. (Both are published anonymously and she's won other awards and honors since for her writings). In the digital age and with tools on Flickr, YouTube, Shutterfly and Scrablog and regular blogs, how will we now begin to document history, stuff and the memories of life? Will they be passed on very differently? Or not? What is the digital life of memories? What is stuff? What stuff is important? It will mean something to mother to see the framed pencil of the ancestor's generationally-occupied Connecticut home on the wall. (We kept that in the closet when we lived in The South where the Civil War was a part of EVERY conversation and talking about my Yankee col. ancestor who escaped from Andersonville and hiked back home was a big THUD in conversation so I quickly learned to note that ALL of my husband's people came from Southern lines and didn't mention my lineage a'tall.)
What to cook? -- All of my recipes and books are in storage. With the weather turning cooler, I want to cook what I learned to cook when I was first married: soups with beans and lentils (we were poor and struggling newlyweds). So I turned to the Hillbilly Housewife for help with Beans, Peas and Lentils and if I need more help, there's always the Bean Bible. I'll cook organic (Izzy Mom has a good piece on why it is good to buy organic for your family).
What to do? Broadway, of course (her first wish -- Oprah's play The Color Purple). The dog accoutrement stores, Chicos, and sharing my life-as-i-live-it with my mother. She'll love walks through Central Park, walking along Fifth or Madison or just going with me walking on errands. Dad... well, I'll take him to the huge Whole Foods stores, just about as big as Texas here. He'll eat it up.
Mother time. Important stuff. Sometimes you don't know what is minutia and what is significant until years and years have passed or until one has time to sort through it all with historical perspective and context.
Photo: third digital iteration from scanned personal b/w photo of mother's Upstate NY ancestors.
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Have fun with your Mother and Dad. Sounds wonderful the things you have planned.
Posted by: janet | October 07, 2006 at 07:20 AM