Childhood Memories & Memoirs

Do you remember a moment that stands out in your mind from your childhood? A defining moment that shaped a part of who you are today?

I think for most adults, especially parents, you can find these moments with ease. Getting your drivers license, your first really serious relationship, your first… anything.

My daughter is a sophomore in high school and she and her friends have an assignment that is giving them all stress ulcers. They have to write a memoir.

My daughter’s thought on this topic: “I cannot write a memoir because I am the only person in the world who has never experienced a relevant occurrence. But, on the bright side, I have new running shoes.”

I read that on her Facebook page and I was stunned. I did some mental calculations on just how many blogs I have written directly about her or about my experiences with her and they were significant enough for me to write it and significant enough for people to read it. But you just don’t see things through the same lens when you’re fifteen than when you are knocking on 40′s door.

I wonder what I would have written about then. What would have stood out as a defining moment? Before driving, before graduation, before many things that have defined my life. What was significant at 15 that I would have recognized as significant?

Then I took a look at her pictures and her “memoirs” were right there in front of her face. The digital world we live in doesn’t lend to writing paper journals. We Facebook, we Twitter, and we take pictures of everything.

I thought of her concert with her best friend Franchesca to see Panic! At The Disco and she was thrilled. Getting a medal during indoor track her freshman year. Going on trips with her youth group. Road trips in the car like our 8 hour wrong turn going to Niagara Falls by way of Montreal. The 11 month anniversary of her and her boyfriend.

She will look at these very pictures in 20 years and she will feel the same thing I feel when I look back at mine. The good ol’ days really were quite good. She will know that she looks so much better than she ever thought when she was 15. She have a slight yearn to feel that sense of wonder and magic when you are teenager that at the time felt so confusing and confining.

I can’t wait to read her memoir but more than that I can’t wait to read it again in 2029.

What’s a significant moment in your childhood? Could you write a memoir?