Create a Family-journal and Give Your Children Something Unique!

We all want to leave something in this world. So, when we're sitting on our pink cloud in the sky one day,we have the good feeling we have not been there for no reason. Because that would be a poor thought, that you have done absolutely nothing worthwhile with your life! Not everybody is creative; so leaving a lot of beautiful paintings or sculptures or even a book is not given to everyone, unfortunately. But here is something everybody who can hold a pen can do: write a Family-journal.

By that I don't mean a dairy with all your inner-most thoughts in it. I mean something else entirely.

In every family there are stories, memories, of all the people who make up your family now and in the past. Part of these are probably stored in your mind now, on a sub-conscious level. You remember uncle so and so, he who always had jokes to tell. Or your grandmother who was good at baking and had beautiful hair. You remember how they lived, where they lived, how they spoke, how they were to you.

The idea came for me in winter. It was cold, rain slashing, and nothing on TV. I took out the photo-books and snuggled up on the couch for a cozy afternoon. A couple of memories came back and I smiled. My son, who is an adult now would never believe me how I had lived when I was growing up. What would he have done without his I-Pod, computer and cell-phone? My mind went back a bit further to my parents' generation. World War II raged through Europe then........and so I ended with my grand-parents . How did these people live? I could remember their house and what they had looked like, but what kind of life had they lived?

First I made a Family-tree, on white card-board. I was surprised to see that it went a lot further in the past than I thought. I added photo's of everybody,starting at the oldest ancestor, going right down to my son. I added the dates when they were born and when they died.When I showed son this he was impressed. All these people had come together in order for him to exist. And looking at his photo you can see a bit of this long line of ancestors in his face.

I decided I wanted to know more about these long dead ancestors of mine and asked aunts, uncles and parents. What I wanted was stories, about real people! The strange thing is, I 'd always thought that these people were poor and unhappy. No outings, no parties, a miserable life with nothing to look forward to. Well, poor they were but to my big surprise they had not been unhappy at all! And although they might not have had the Internet, they knew exactly what was going on in the world. I heard so many interesting family-stories that I decided to write it all down for future generations.

My journal is written for a small audience:the future generation of my family. It also has a part of world-history in it that young people don't know about. A fine example is WWII: a 15-year old (future History-student) asked me the other day if the people in Europe had fought at all! Your "history" might be vastly different of course; I can imagine African-American people have a lot of history to tell their next generation. Or it could be that your family has lived in wealthy circumstances in the past. How did that go with servants tripping over each other? These are just a couple of ideas, to get you thinking. But I'm sure you too have quite a story to tell. It doesn't matter what age you are; you can start right now and keep on adding every time you hear or think of something interesting, or you want to pass on to the next generation.

It also doesn't really matter whether you have kids or not. Somebody will be very interested in the future about the past of your family., and be grateful to you!