Grandma, Mom and me

I love my mom. Nothing out of the ordinary there. Most people do. Yet I suspect I’m also in an overloaded life raft of folks who dread visiting their aging parent. Not much to talk about. Not much to report. Too many prying questions you’d rather not answer. Too many repetitions. Yet I’ve chosen  to live in the same town most my adult life. So I feel obligated to stay close but I might ignore more than the good son or daughter who lives at a distance. (Case in point, my sister who lives 60 miles further away but is much more of a constant in Mom’s life than I am.)

Speaking of repetitive stories, those same stories I’ve heard dozens of times and tuned out hundreds more are ones I’ve encouraged my Mom to write down or record somehow for years to no avail. Once she’s gone though, all those stories go with her.

Here lately I’ve come up with a great idea that at once gets the stories I know and many I don’t recorded for posterity and makes our visits more fun for both of us than they’ve been for years. How? Well, I bought one of those scanner/printer combinations and parked it at my Mom’s house. Every week I try to make time to visit taking my laptop with me. I scan some of the old pictures she has in albums and on walls. Then as I edit them slightly at the kitchen table, she will go on and on telling stories the pictures bring to mind. I type them into the caption of the picture (using Picasa from google) asking follow up or clarification questions as necessary. Doing this, the time just flies by and yet our visits are much longer than they were before.

When I’m all done with the pictures, (which could literally take years at this rate) I plan on turning the collection into books for all immediate family members through a site like mypublisher.com. In the meantime though, I post weekly updates of that week’s  pictures over at our family website at geni.com for all the family to enjoy. I’ve gotten positive comments from several family members for what I’m doing.

But the point isn’t the pats on the back. The point is that I’ve found something that rekindles a stagnant relationship and records a bit of family history that will soon otherwise be only a vague memory in our family life. I recommend it to any of you faced with a similar situation.