A Memory a Day to England

 

Sarah and John Nelson 2008

   In 2008, my daughter, Sarah, married her beau, John. Sarah had become a librarian and was doing a lot of storytelling – mythology, children's stories, and personal tales. John completed law school, and had accepted a fellowship in Norwich, England. Their stay in England, beginning shortly after the wedding, was going to be for one year.

     I wanted to tell Sarah that I would send her an email every day of the year that they would be gone, but my life is not exciting enough for an email a day! So then I decided, in conjunction with our mutual interest in storytelling, that I would send a story a day – more specifically, write up and email each day, a memory from my life! Surely I could come up with 365 memories, couldn't I? Heck I could probably come up with enough memories for two years, I think! Well, the thing would be to find out – just the first 365 memories, anyway.

     So the kids flew to England, and I started sending memories – not at all chronological, and some of them connected – something that happened in 8^th grade threaded into incidents in 9^th and 10^th grade, or something one daughter did reminded me of something I had done at the same age. And I sent them to not to just Sarah and John but to a few other family members also and some friends. They all did not read all of them – but I found that this was a great exercise for me –  the reflecting, the feeling of those emotions of memories that have stuck with me from childhood – the reliving of them gave them new meaning now that I could see them from an adult point of view or from a point years later.

     Of course, as much fun and value as this exercise was, I was terrible at keeping up with it. Some entire weekends were spent catching up with the emails – instead of Sarah getting a memory a day, she might get none for a week and then eight in one day. This also made me a pain to be around at home, as you might imagine.

     So if I say that I completed only six months of this commitment, one might conclude that the whole thing was an abysmal failure. But if you think about it this way – hey! She has six months' worth of memories written down somewhere! That's kind of neat.

     And no, I did not run out of memories to talk about – in actuality, it was Mike's fiftieth birthday party preparations in April of '09 that captivated my entire attention at the six-month point, and afterward we heard that the kids would be returning to the States in June rather than September, and the need for a story-a-day or eight-stories-a-weekend faded away.

     This blog, A Sharp Stick in the Eye, was going to use the stories already written in the emails from 2008 and 2009 so that I would not get behind in 2015 and become the same pain in the butt that I was before in trying to keep up. But as you might guess, old stories have been rewritten or updated with new reflections – and some stories will not be used as I realized they were more about “what happened today” rather than actual memories. And then of course, there are the other six months' worth of a memory-a-day that will need putting together – and pictures! I want to add pictures!

     There are notes scribbled about everywhere - pockets, purse, phone, giant desk I'm using at home - of what I want to write about – today is day 34 of the 365 day year – made it this far – let's see where it goes!

34 20150203 memory a day England