Six questions worth asking on the next car ride, why reminiscing lifts mood when little else does, and the ten minutes of recording you will keep forever.
You know her as your mother. You know almost nothing about the woman she was before that, and there’s a window on it that doesn’t stay open forever.
Try it this week. Not a big interview. One question while you’re driving her somewhere, when neither of you has to make eye contact, which is when people say the real things.
What did your first apartment look like. What did your father do on Sundays. How much did you make at your first job. Where did you go on a date when you were nineteen. What was the worst job you ever had. How did you know about Dad.
Then be quiet and let her talk, even if she takes the long way around, even if you’ve heard a version of it before. Especially then. The stories that get repeated are the ones that mattered.
Around here you’ll get good material. Asbury Park before it emptied out and after it came back. The Keansburg boardwalk in July. What Route 35 looked like before all of it. The blizzard of ’78. Storms that took the power out for a week and the whole street ate together.
Record it. Your phone has a voice memo app and she’ll forget it’s running in about ninety seconds. Ten minutes of her telling a story in her own voice is a thing you will be grateful for in a way that’s hard to explain in advance.
There’s a practical side too. Reminiscing is one of the few things that reliably lifts mood in older adults, and it works even when memory has started to go. Old stories sit in a different part of the mind than yesterday’s lunch.
So ask about 1961. She’s been waiting a long time for somebody to.
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