For our grandchildren's children

Get personal (but keep your distance)

Document, document, document

I’ve been tossing around a thought in the last week. I’ve wondered if there is anyone still alive that I know personally who lived through a pandemic. There is no one. My 91 year old mother did not live through anything like what we are now experiencing. How many boomers talked with their grandparents about the Spanish Flu? I did not.

That alone made me think how very valuable personal accounts of this experience will benefit our as of yet unborn family members. There will be media accounts, this will be in the history books, and blogs will flourish. Yet, there is nothing like a personal account of just about anything.

Behind the scenes

What to do?!!?

This is the time to be smart. This is the time to think of others. This is the time to stay home. Collectively, this is the only way we can slow down this monster. We’ve all heard this, but what else can we do while moving about is restricted?

This is an opportunity to gEt cReAtiVe! It is during such times, history has shown, that ingenuity blossoms. One way to pass the time while we are confined inside is to think of chronicling your story of right now. People many years in the future will want to read personal accounts of life right now.

In the US we are in the early stages. Still, we each have a story. Think about how this has already affected you:

• What can you not easily buy at the store?
• What can you not order on-line?
• What are the wait times?
• How has your daily schedule changed?
• Who can you visit and who must you stay away from?
• How has your career/job been affected?
• What had you planned to do that is now on hold?
• How about finances? (I hate to mention this one.)

This list is about things and that’s OK. Yet, people will want the juicy stuff: How does a pandemic make you feel? Are you feeling supported? Do you feel hope? Are you depressed? Are you frustrated? Are you scared? Are you OK?

What are you thinking?

At my house

A journal and a gift

You know I make journals. It brings me great joy to create them and give as gifts. I think of the intended recipient as I put one together and focus on my relationship with them. It helps me create. Just shy of my suggesting you all make them, I present mine as an example, a creative place, in which to record your story. This one is for my niece.

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I coffee dyed the pages you see that look oldish. After experimenting with the dying process, I came up with some nice greens and blacks and reds and yellows. My sewing machine comes in handy, too.

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I gutted an old book and made envelopes from the book’s cover.

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I wanted to preserve some of the pages from the book (titled The Land Breakers). Inside the pocket on the first collection of pages (below) I’ve placed the first page of the book. Others are sprinkled thorough out the journal.

Notice the page above with large font? While recently researching my great, great grandfather Joseph Geier, I made a timeline of his life. When I printed it out I was surprised to see such large letters. It could not have been me…it had to have been my psycho printer. What better than add the page to a journal, especially when the recipient is Joseph Geier’s great, great, great granddaughter? Exactly.

More places to record a story:

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Making a journal is not everyone’s cup of tea. That’s cool. A pad and pencil will do.

If nothing, I hope this inspires you to record your story of our current time. Your story is a gift, your words priceless.

Thanks for reading. ❤