A Legacy Better than Money

Wouldn't you love to have a memoir of your grandparents or great-grandparents, to read of their passions and disappointments? To know what kind of family stories and discussions took place at their supper table? What their thoughts were on religion? What their hobbies were and how they met and happen to marry? I think it would be a legacy better than money.

I have always enjoyed writing - putting my thoughts and feelings down on paper. Writing classes always sparked my creative juices, but when the classes were over, my writing had a way of simmering on the back burner.

Then, while sitting with family at a niece's wedding, remembering and retelling stories - stories from our childhood--my brother, Bill, leaned over and said, "You know. It's too bad our great-grandchildren will never know what it was like back then; and they'll never know the kind of man dad was or anything about shanty life." I nodded in agreement.

"We should write this stuff down," Bill said. And it was then the idea was planted--to work together and write family stories. Later I enrolled in another writing class. One of the assignments was to write about a specific character, to describe him and tell something about him. I wrote about Pete, an old guy that was a constant visitor at our shanty. I called it A Man With No Stories.

Giving Bill the story to read was probably the biggest hurdle towards getting started. And I could tell, once he'd read the story that he was hesitant also to comment.

"I like the story," he said rather cautiously. "I just never thought of Pete as a man with no stories."

I defended my title. Pete didn't hunt or fish, or even own a boat, yet he had a cottage; he didn't drive,yet somehow he managed to get to his cottage every weekend, the same as us; and we gave him a ride back to Oshkosh on Sunday evenings. As far as I could tell his personal life was a mystery to everyone.

Bill thought for a moment. "Well - he told me how he met his wife," he said.

I could hardly believe it. We had known Pete for many years before we even knew he had a wife. And in all the years we knew him she never came out to his cottage. "What did he say," I asked.

"He said he just woke up one morning, and there she was in bed with him."

"That's it!" I asked. "That's all you know?"

He aughed and we both agreed. If that's all we knew about Pete the title suited him, A Man With No Stories. And that was the start of our collaborative effort to write family stories. I wrote mine and Bill worte his and we found it easier to keep on task, knowing that one or the other of us was waiting for another story. Reviewing each others work was also a benefit. A writer always feels whatever he writes is golden. It's not until the work has sat for a week or more and he goes back to review it that he can see where revisions are needed. Reviewing each others work allowed us to see a story with a fresh eye and offer each other comments. Similar benefits may be obtained by belonging to a writers club that is willing to critique your work.