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Sharing Your History
Creating a Legacy
for Your Grandkids By Sue Marquette Poremba
for Your Grandkids
Because family traditions are frequently centered on meals, handing down recipes is another ideal way for grandparents to share a legacy.
"So many of our memories are connected with food," says Kate Walling, founder of TheSecretIngredients.com, a business specializing in creating heirloom cookbooks. "Recipe books become family heirlooms." Walling helps grandparents create family recipe books that include photographs and personal stories about individual recipes.
If writing seems too daunting, Gross suggests recording the story first. "Some people talk better than they write," she says. "The story can be written from there." Or, she adds, try writing the history as a series of letters.
Gross suggests the following tips to prepare for sharing your history:
- Consider choosing book form over video. "Books are meant to last a lifetime," says Gross. "We don't know what kind of video systems will be available in the future."
- Decide who you are preparing this for. Is the grandchild alive now, or is this for grandchildren of the future who may never know you? That will determine how much back story or explanation to provide.
- Tell stories rather than recite facts.
- Plan to finish what you start. Often people begin a project and set it aside, planning to finish it later, but the project never gets done.
Walling adds her three steps to creating a history for grandchildren. "Make sure it is of good quality so it lasts; make sure you are well organized when you sit down to do the project; and make sure it is personalized because that's what your family wants," she says.
"Even if you don't think your story is exciting, it is to your family," says Gross. "We're interested because it is Grandma or Grandpa."