Relative Something

“You never know when you’re making a memory” from Young Blood by Rickie Lee Jones

A few weeks ago I was writing about some family history, and during that time I had pulled out a box of memorabilia that contained surveys I had family members fill out on a Thanksgiving back in 1990. I completely forgot they existed. Originally the idea was to bring them out in the year 2000 to share what everyone had written. It didn’t happen until almost 19 years after we recorded our answers.

Now I’ve uncovered even more memories from the ’90s, but these have taken a bit more effort. From 1992 through 1994, I tried to write a paragraph or two every morning when I got to my office at work, recording stories about what our kids had been involved with the day before. I wrote directly to my children and hoped that someday they would find value in hearing some of the day-to-day activities. I also was hoping to capture some of what Cyndie’s and my intentions were in our nurturing and educating of the kids.

When I conceived the idea to do the daily writing, I was infatuated with my new access to a Macintosh computer and a software novelty called, Hypercard. Hypercard is no longer compatible with the current operating systems. The software can be downloaded, but it won’t run unless you have an old operating system. Finding the folder of files, called Hypercard Stacks, on an old external hard drive was exciting for me, but I couldn’t get any of the software on my computer to cleanly read the text of the Hypercard Stacks.

It took a few tries and some research, but I finally have it all working again on an old computer at work. So far, Cyndie and I have read through the first three months of ’93 (unfortunately, ’92 is nowhere to be found). There are some stories that are real gems, and some revelations of things we don’t recollect, and also some descriptions of times I’d rather not remember. I don’t like revisiting moments of gnashing of teeth and intense sobbing. Sure, it happened, but some memories are better left faded by time.

One thing that struck me was how many times the kids were allowed to fall asleep in our bed and then later moved to their own. There are also a lot of mentions of kids they played with at the time, most, long gone by now. Overall, it is a treasure trove of memories. I highly recommend the exercise to parents of young children. Consider what you can do now, that when stored for a decade or two becomes incredibly valuable in subsequent years. …You never know when you’re making a memory.