One Memory at a Time : Inspiration and Advice for Writing Your Family Story

A wonderful companion to the best-selling To Our Children's Children, One Memory at a Time offers indispensable guidance and encouragement on writing family and personal histories.

Family history isn't hard. We do it every day without thinking about it. Our minds travel in that direction. Our minds are always going home. Family stories are our points of reference in every situation. They are involuntary responses, like sneezes. We see a hat worn by a man on an old movie channel and our minds jump to grandfather; his hat, his chair, his Scottie on his lap. We roll our cart by the butcher case at the grocery store and a passing glimpse at cubes of stew beef transports us momentarily to mother's kitchen, where she reaches for her blue-speckled roasting pan, the one with the lid.

When you give your stories, you are giving yourself. You are giving your parents, your grandparents, your great-grandparents to future generations. You are allowing the past and the present to shake hands with one another.

Your family history is not meant to be painted in broad brush strokes, summing up the meaning of the millennium. It is a description of your living room, of your grandmother's living room-your life.

D. G. Fulford is a former columnist to the Los Angeles Daily News and the New York Times News Service.  She is the coauthor with Bob Greene of To Our Children's Children and Notes on the Kitchen Table.