Save the Memories

Put The Memories In a Book
courtesy photobucket.com

My earliest recollections are measured by where I lived during different spans of time.

 
Ages three and four were when we lived in Exeter, California, prior to our move to Oakland. 

I remember Mother washing clothes in an old wash tub in the yard and hanging them out to dry on a line.  She used one of those old fashioned wash rub boards to get out the spots and make sure everything was clean. 

The outhouse was vivid in my memory, but I was very tiny, so a small potty chair graced the back porch just for me. 

I had just turned three, and I remember banging on the bedroom door, and demanding to see my mother when my sister was born.  My Aunt Edna told me that I could not see her because my mother was sick. 

Refusing to be denied, I screamed and yelled, “I want my Mama,” until my aunt finally allowed me a short visit.  Mother smiled at me, and reached out to give me a gentle hug, and then she asked me to please obey my aunt, so I said, “Okay,” and did as she asked.

Even though my mother had two other babies, she found time to rock me, and sing to me for my nap.  Although I was three years old, and closed my eyes, I remember thinking, “I will pretend that I am asleep and trick mama.”  

Even at that young age, I was manipulative and it has served me well.  Mother thought I was asleep so she quietly carried me to my bed, except by the time she laid me down I was out like a light.

Having just celebrated my fifth birthday, I watched as Mother Packed up an ironing board and two boxes of kettles and dishes.  Then I went along with her to the train station to ship them off to Oakland where I would eventually grow up and attend school. 

There was a few weeks and perhaps only days, when I, my brother Allen, and my sister Zelma slept on the floor on a mattress at Uncle Cliff and Aunt Beulah’s home while our parents searched out a rental house. 

That year living in the rent house cemented age five in my memory.  The move after that was to a home purchased by my parents and it held all my childhood memories until I married, and left home at age 18.

At the urging of our daughter Nancy, for the past four years, I have been documenting memories from my childhood, remembrances from my children growing up, and other memories as the stories are posted to my blog.

Nancy and a couple of other friends insisted that it is now time to get those stories into a book.  Rescue the Stories book One, Book Two and Book Three have been printed.

Moving my earliest stories to a folder separated them from my other posts, and gave me many childhood stories.  There was enough for my first book, and stories of my children begin in book Two.  Rescue the Stories Book Three is of the golden later years.

Time marches, on and today is the day to rescue the old memories, and not allow them to fade into the distance. 

Begin now to write your memoirs.  Go ahead and post them.