Motherhood as Storytelling, Part Two: Beyond the Baby Book

This is a picture of my son’s baby book with a sweet, blond-haired, blue-eyed boy on the cover:

baby book

Unfortunately, that’s not MY sweet, blond-haired, blue-eyed boy – though I do have one! After 14 months, I still haven’t put his photo on the cover. Oops? Sadly, the cover is reflective of the somewhat haphazard records in the rest of the book, as well.

In my last post, I shared how I’m learning that storytelling is a meaningful role I can play as a mom – one that starts with simply paying attention to the ordinary details happening around me. But moms also need practical ways to remember and record those details, and for some of us, the baby book isn’t completely working. (If you are a mom who is rocking the baby book, please offer a workshop so I can come and learn your ways!)

So, for my friends who are also baby book-challenged, here are some simple ideas for how we can record and tell the everyday stories happening in our family:

  1. Write letters to your kids. I recently started this tradition on my son’s first birthday. Sitting down for an hour to write a letter to him was a meaningful way for me to reflect on his first year of life, rehearse some of my favorite moments from the year, and capture what I’m thinking and feeling right now as his mom. (By the way, I think a mom’s feelings and experiences are actually an important part of her kids’ stories – and that’s something a baby book doesn’t always prompt us to capture.) I don’t know how my child will feel about having these letters someday, but I do know that my own mom wrote me a similar letter the summer before I went to college, sharing with me a few themes she had seen emerging in my life. While I’m pretty sure I rolled my eyes and didn’t know how to respond at the time, I’ve never forgotten it. I remember being impressed she was paying so much attention! Personal letters can be powerful.
  1. Capture stories on your phone, blog, and social networking sites – but also get some of them in print! Online forums like personal blogs and social networking sites are great family memory-keepers. I love how these tools allow me to easily organize pictures and generate text. However, call me old-fashioned, but I think there is also value in having some of these memories in print. I mean, what are the chances my son is going to sit down and scroll through my Instagram feed in 15 years? I think it’s probably smart to record my family’s stories in multiple mediums. Luckily, there are great resources to help us do just that, such as:
  •  Groovebook: This wonderful app can be used for just $2.99/month. Every month, I get a reminder to upload 100 photos from my phone, and within a few days, I receive a small, packaged photo album in the mail. As a bonus, each picture is date and time stamped! It’s been a great way to actually print all those pictures I keep on my phone with extremely little effort on my part. (I suppose this also means I have NO excuse for not having a picture in the front of the baby book …)
  • Blurb: This site allows you to import photos directly from Instagram, Facebook, or other social networks and turn them into a high-quality photo book. They also offer a blog-to-book feature, so you can publish your entire blog! My friends who have used this site have great things to say about both its ease and quality.
  • You can also print your Instagram photos in fun and easy-to-display ways by using sites like Origrami or Prinstagram.
  1. Weave family stories into the regular rhythm of life. Do you already read books or discuss the day’s events at regular times, perhaps at dinnertime or before bed? Use these pre-established times to also rehearse the stories that have shaped your family. Maybe you can all laugh together about how the couch was decorated with Sharpie last summer … and how that will NEVER happen again. Or maybe the best bedtime story is the one about how you chose your child’s name. Telling these stories regularly will ensure they get remembered, and it will strengthen your family’s sense of shared history, which can help your family grow closer together.
  1. Enlist your kids and family members to write the stories, too. This idea is simple: recruit everyone to be storytellers! Most kids love to write about their own experiences. Encourage your children to write about or draw their favorite family moments or keep a journal of their own stories. I think it’s also worth remembering that many stories outside of our direct experience, even ones that happened before we were born, are important to our lives. We are all affected by larger stories – stories of family ancestry, religious narratives, or historical influences on our family — and we may need to recruit other people to share these types of stories with our kids. For instance, my son was named after his Great-Great-Grandpa – someone I hardly even knew. So, I’ve been asking my parents and grandparents to write down some things they remember about him. Even if my son will never know his namesake, I want him to have this piece of history available to him.
  1. Tell your family’s stories in whatever way you tell them best. If you tell stories best through photographs, take great photos and frame them on your walls. If you tell stories through quilting, put together amazing pieces of fabric that mean something to your family and put those quilts on display. If you love to cook, collect recipes and write memories of when you shared those meals as a family next to them. It doesn’t matter if you record and tell stories for your family the way anyone else does … only that you tell them.

 Please share more ideas below! How do you keep track of your family’s story?

Jenna
Jenna lives in Midtown with her husband and two kids (ages 6 and 4). She has an M.A. in English and too many overdue books at the library. She has been working with writers for over a decade, as a high school teacher, college instructor, and writing coach. She loves good coffee, serious conversation, and not-too-serious fiction.