“But all of us have stories. Who doesn’t drive past an old homestead, an old store, a bridge no longer in use, and say, “I remember…”. That memory can live on only if we share it. Write it down, make a voice recording, or at the very least, tell it to one person who will remember it.”
I found this quote in my notes for future blog posts. I’m always telling people to “write it down,” when I hear stories told. Like photographs that are no longer printed, stories from our past and present experiences may get lost.
My friend Marie has recently published her memoirs, Dirt Roads Lead Home: A Memoir About Connections to a Place. It’s currently available at amazon. Details are here.
I was privileged to be an early reader of Marie’s stories and found them delightful. I love reading memoirs of all types, but Marie and I share common roots in small town, rural Georgia landscapes. Although our growing up experiences were in many ways not alike, her memories of buses and clotheslines and kitchen routines brought similar, yet different, personal flashbacks to mind.
Marie included maps for her family members to relate to places in the past. Drawing maps led to the thought of drawing other things, so the volume is illustrated by Marie’s delightful sketches.
If you are a country girl from the South, or if you aren’t, check out Marie’s book to trigger memories of your childhood. Then write them down! Or sketch the place. Or make a quilt. Or do all the above!
Note: After a month of no blogging and not much sewing; just in a different routine, it’s good to be back at it all. I’ve been stitching by hand on the past few evenings, and it does feel great! Today the sewing machine is humming, too. The festive life is good: cooking, visiting, entertaining are all fun, but I’m glad to be back in a familiar groove.
Like you, I encourage people to write down their stories. Guess it was time for me to write a few of my own. Thanks for sharing the news of my memoir.