id="id00188">They would listen, spellbound and cut in with comments and questions. To them, it was their family history and often, drama, and they really want to know. Invariably, the story was followed with reminiscences by their Mom and Dad who added variations, details, interpretations from their memories, and spin off comparable events in their lives, often long into the wee hours.

Autobiography became living history-the occasion of the telling, itself, is now an event not to be forgotten-and the finest kind of intergenerational communication.

Folk Tales

An old, old man lived in the home of his son. The son had a wife and a young son of his own. At meal times the old man sat at the kitchen table. His eyes were dim and he barely saw; his ears were dull and he barely heard, and his hands trembled. He had difficulty holding his spoon as he tried to feed himself broth from a bowl. Now and then a few drops fell from his spoon on to the tablecloth, or the bowl tipped too far, spilling.

His son and his son's wife were disgusted at the sight of him. Finally, one day, after the old man's trembling hand caused the bowl to fall to the floor and break, they gave him an old wooden bowl, and made him sit with it out of sight behind the stove. At mealtimes, they put food into the wooden bowl and left the old man alone to manage as best he could.

One evening, after dinner, they were all in the sitting room. The old man's son noticed that his own young son had gathered few pieces of wood and stored them in a corner among his playthings.

'What have you there?' The youngster's father pointed to the wood.

The child looked up. 'I am making wooden bowls,' he answered quietly, 'for you and for Mommy to eat out of when I am grown, and you are both very old.' *** I received a letter from a woman of Japanese ancestry who read the preceding story. She wrote that her father, who had passed along to his children much of the lore and tales of old Japan, had another version:

In many villages of old Japan, the townsfolk suffered deeply and often the extremes of hunger and cold. It was vital to the survival of the able- bodied that those who were in their final hours of life be taken to the nearby foothills and left there to die. This sorrowful task belonged to the senior son.

So it was, indeed, that a dutiful senior son, at the appropriate time imposed by illness and tradition, wrapped his dying mother in the family blanket reserved for such sad occasions. He lifted her gently, cradled her in his arms, and made his way to a sheltered place among the nearby foothills' rocks and underbrush.

Lowering his mother to the ground, he kneeled beside her and tenderly made his final good-bye. She listened silently, breathing shallow, eyes closed. Finally, he stood, bowed deeply and, tears in his eyes, turned to leave.

'Wait, my son.' Her voice was barely a whisper. 'Do not forget the blanket. The day will come when it will be needed for another and, in time, for you.'

Turn-the-page Stories

A grandmother told me how she sometimes became part of a story to her very young and distant grandchild. She wrote:

I audiotape the story and mail the book to him along with the cassette,' she wrote, 'but there's more to it than that. In recording, when I get to the end of a page, I talk about the illustrations on that page, and then say 'turn the page'. He loves this part and tells his Mom that he wants to listen to Grandma's 'turn the page' book. When children are too young to read by themselves, they can follow along independently when you tell them-on the tape-when it's time to 'turn the page.'

Record Your Albums

Inquiries I've received from too-faraway grandparents include audio taping stories, family lore and anecdotes, especially family history. Several commented that talking was easier for them than writing.

In my responses I told about the time and circumstances that I had taped a commentary to our family's photo and document album, and how I went about it.

For almost 40 years my wife and I, and before they left for college, our children, moved about the United States and the world, working and living our lives. We had accumulated a fair number of photos and documents over the years; they were important parts of our family history.

During those active years, family archives were low priority. During periods of relative quiet we reminded ourselves to organize our records, add notes on the reverse sides of photos and important documents, and file them away in albums. As with most families, my wife had all the names, dates, places, and the why and how details catalogued and stored in her mind. We thought we had plenty of time. We did not.

Months after the tragedy, when I was able to focus my thoughts again, one of my many tasks was to gather the cartons, shoeboxes and envelopes of photos and documents. I spread them across every available clear space and tried to make sense of the lot. Many, from past generations, were scenes from the early part of the twentieth century and before. I separated the collection into two groups: Group One: preceding our meeting and marriage, and Group Two: our life together and those who became a part of it.

Group One went into albums as Part A: my wife before we met and her side of the family, and Part B: the same for me and mine. I arranged Group Two (our married life) into collections according to the places where we had resided. The result had many sections.

Organizing the material in each section chronologically, I inserted them into the albums and numbered each photo, document and page. I identified each album sequentially on its spine with a gold foil letter from a packet purchased at a supermarket.

Setting up my tape recorder, I opened the first album. Contemplating the first two facing pages, I recorded what I was going to do in a general introduction, then waded into the narration: photographs, documents, and the flooding memories. Nothing fancy, low key, free association.

The first volumes dealt with people of whom I knew little, so my comments were brief and sketchy. When I reached familiar ground, my remarks were detailed: 'Picture 4 on Page 12 was taken in August of '52 when we lived in beautiful downtown XYZ. Our house is on the right; in the foreground is A, B and C, and coming down the walk is the D family: H, I and J. Soon after the photo was taken, by K, we all drove to AA, visited the city of BB, and had lunch at CC. It was that afternoon that the ZZ incident occurred, and about which I've often talked. For those of you who haven't heard the story, here's what happened….'

And so, far into the night and for days and nights afterward. The task is done, and the archives are ready to pass along to the next generation.

Whenever the subject comes up with others, or when I speak to groups, I urge against putting off this task. We all share in the two great mysteries: mortality and uncertainty. Among the treasures we leave behind are our memories, especially those of family and happy times.

No Answers

Occasionally, among the letters I received, was one that reflected deep disappointment and anguish. The writer had tried to contact a grandchild-or a grandparent-who was too faraway geographically or beyond a barrier of circumstance. There were no answers. *** A man in his eighties wrote that he had a couple of dozen grandchildren and great-grandchildren scattered around the world. Not one had written to him or telephoned,