My children, Kristina and PJ, came up with a delightful Christmas gift of having me put together a book by answering an unusual collection of questions week by week over the course of the year 2023. They even read most of the responses to keep me going. The questions were more oriented to childhood and family recollections than anything I had written professionally or on my blog. But I really enjoyed the experience – and the outcome is a real book!
I had hesitated to get started, with a question fed to me by the organization, Storyworth – the publisher-to-be of this unusual book. It caught me a bit off guard. The question was basically asking me to remember what I was doing on the day that Martin Luther King. Jr was assassinated. Really now? What did it matter what I was doing? Wasn’t it more useful to write about something like his legacy and what that might mean to me (and everyone else)? So I set it aside for a week or two but did plunge in with responding to a rephrased question that included my recollections of that awful day but also focused more generally on his legacy.
In fact, I recognized, this was a serendipitously welcome question to start things off because MLK’s legacy has, indeed, played an important role in my life. I never asked, but I have wondered if Kristina and PJ had something to do with choosing that as a starter question. I suspect that most if not all of the other questions were from a standard Storyworth list. And it did get me going on a fairly weekly basis throughout the year.
A lot of the questions were rather superficial – what were your favorite toys as a child or when did you get your first car or what are your favorite TV shows, etc. But on the whole, I found that the questions stimulated me to write from an entirely different perspective – one that I ended up enjoying for the most part. Even the mundane questions opened up pleasurable writing opportunities. And I frequently took the liberty to rephrase the questions or to use them to express some philosophical point or another. Ultimately, I used the tool to produce something that I would not have otherwise produced!
The book itself has 47 chapters (i.e. my responses to 47 different questions), and I opted to publish the book in the order that I wrote them. I called it “A Trove of Stories, Volume I”. The publishing cost was rather steep. So I only ordered a few copies. Here I have prepared a list of the chapters organized around certain categories. I can make specific chapters available separately on request.
Philosophical Questions:
- What does Martin Luther King, Jr’s legacy mean to you?
- What inventions have had the biggest impact on your day-to-day life?
- What are some of the most important elections you’ve voted in, and what made them important to you?
- What is your best relationship advice?
- How is your faith different from your parents’ faith?
- What advice would you give your 20-year-old self?
- If you had unlimited access to money, what would you do with it?
- If this was the last thing you wrote, what words of wisdom would you share?
Childhood questions:
- What was your Mom like when you were a child?
- What was your Dad like when you were a child?
- What were your favorite toys as a child?
- What were your grandparents like?
- What is one of your favorite children’s stories?
- Are you still friends with any of your friends from high school? How have they changed since then?
- What fascinated you as a child?
- Did you have a job while you were in school?
- How did your parents pick your name?
- Did you ever move as a child? What was that experience like?
- Who had the most positive influence on you as a child?
- Was there anything unusual about your birth?
- What sports did you play in high school?
- How did you get to school as a child?
- Where did you go on vacations as a child?
- What sports teams were you a fan of as a child?
- What sports did you like most when you were young?
- What were your favorite subjects in high school?
- Which fads did you embrace growing up?
- What phrases do you use that you picked up from your family?
Lifestyle Questions:
- What was your first boss like?
- How did you get your first job?
- Who have been your closest friends throughout the years?
- What are some of your family traditions?
- What places can you travel to over and over again?
- What was your best boss like?
- When did you get your first car?
- What were you like when you were 40?
- What is one of your favorite trips that you’ve taken? What made it great?
- What is one of the worst trips you’ve ever taken? What went wrong?
- How far back can you trace your family ancestry?
- When did you decide to have a family and what has it been like to have a family?
- How did you decide when to change jobs?
Mundane Questions:
- When did you get your first car?
- What are your favorite musicians, bands or albums?
- What are your favorite TV shows?
- What famous or important people have you encountered in real life?
- What are your favorite movies?
As I wrote in one of the last chapters, “Much of the stories in this first volume are about my childhood memories, often based on questions I would never have thought of. What’s missing are shared memories of more recent years, especially those involving my wonderful family”. In fact, I might add, the question for this particular chapter – “When did you decide to have a family and what has it been like to have a family?” – is one that I added on my own towards the end of the year-long experience. I described it as a “prelude for a second volume”. (I have added it to the Villa Ndio website as a separate Musing.)
And here it is halfway through 2024, and I have yet to start on that second volume. Well, I’ve been busy with other things – like learning how to slow down! After all, I am now 80 years old and can’t deny the effects of the aging process. We had a great party at Villa Ndio to celebrate that numerical milepost, thanks to the magnanimous outpouring of friends and family. And I even made a point of treating myself to an extra trip to the States in June to see more family and to pretend that I am still intellectually on top of things. It was exhausting, but I have no regrets. I have in mind a photo collection of the people and of the experiences. And then, perhaps a second volume.