Here is what we’ll do this weekend: We’ll work on our mini-memoir, about the holiday we took in 2024.
A mini what, I can almost hear you say. Memoir. But less wordy than a typical book-memoir. And with photos – lots of them.
It will be a physical thing, with actual paper and real photos printed out. You can call it a photo album too, but I want it to be more than that. So, let’s say it is somewhere between a photo album and a journal.
Do we already have photos? Yes, untidily scattered across four phones. Would they have any meaning if someone were to look at them without explanations and context? Not much.
That is why I’ve opted not to use a conventional photo album with those fixed plastic slots. Instead, I’ve bought heavy A3-size paper that I will later put together with metal book rings to create a photo book. We’ll stick the photos, yes. But as you can see, I’ve left lots of space all around because I want you to add your thoughts.
We may have been in the same places during our holiday, but we experienced them differently. What did you feel about a particular day? Which was your favourite moment?
For example, I frowned when it rained during our time in the countryside, as it meant we couldn’t go out and do the sightseeing and exploring that we – okay, I – had planned.
But you – the youngest child – were delighted because we then stayed in our accommodation for the rest of the day. And that was all you wanted to do – lie in bed in that cosy bedroom in our quaint Airbnb, with the rain pattering on the windows.
So, pick up a pen and write down what you remember. Add silly sketches and graffiti-like comments to the pages. If you send me screengrabs of the social media posts you had put up at the time, I’ll get them printed and add them to the record.
Above all, let’s make this mini-memoir personal.
Memoirs are more than just facts
A memoir is not an autobiography and does not have to be a retelling of one’s life story from the cradle to the grave. It can be themed to have a narrower focus. For example, it can be about overcoming a health condition.
A memoir should also be more than a detailing of facts – or, in the case of a typical photo album, more than page after page of uncaptioned photos. That’s why I’m pitching our holiday journal this way. And don’t just take it from me.
Author and poet Felix Cheong, who has been running a course called Remembering The Past: Writing Your Memoir, shared some tips with me.
“Facts alone are boring. Without emotion and dialogue, they’re dead on paper. I teach my participants that you need details, description and dialogue to make a scene come alive. You have to make the reader feel emotion.
“Even if your memoir is read by only family, you still need to grab their attention, especially if you want it read by the younger generation.”
“To begin at the beginning – ‘I was born in…’ – is also boring,” he added. “You have to throw the reader into the middle of something.”
So, kids, please fill up the first page of our holiday mini-memoir, where I’ve listed suggestions like “best meal”, “I want to go back to…” and “a bad moment”.
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We can reflect the whole picture
That’s right, let’s include the bad moments too. We don’t have to gloss over the lousier parts of a holiday. I know we all remember that morning when we went to a weekend market and Kate had a meltdown.
The day trip had started off well enough, but the market very quickly became crowded, chaotic and noisy.
The random bric-a-brac/touristy souvenirs section seemed to be where we were stuck at, and I don’t know if it was because I kept hustling Kate along or because we didn’t find the food carts at the right time. But the long and short of it was that I had to leave the market early with her – splitting up our family outing yet again – because she was so agitated.
However, once we were settled in a quieter cafe where she had a nice meal, she calmed down and we were able to regroup for the afternoon activity, which went well.
So, while it wasn’t an episode anyone would want, we can also see it for what it is: a frustrating, upsetting hour that improved and passed and didn’t ruin the rest of the holiday. We learnt from the experience, prepared better and went on to have some really excellent days, all five of us together.
By including the less-pleasant moments, perhaps the silent story I also want you – us – to understand is that although families aren’t perfect, we can get through difficult situations if we try, and if we support one another whenever help is needed.
A bad day isn’t the end of the world. Each time something challenging happens and we recover from it, we know, with a little more confidence, that we can cope.
We can tolerate disappointments. We can adjust to new situations and solve problems as they arise. That’s part of our family story too.
Psychology professor Robyn Fivush said in an article in American magazine Psychology Today that family stories are what bind us. According to her, research shows that adolescents who know more about their family history, such as how their parents met and “even difficult events such as a terrible illness that a family member suffered”, showed more positive outcomes, including lower anxiety and a higher sense of family cohesion. They have “a sense of history and belonging”.
She wrote: “How parents and their parents before them met the inevitable obstacles of life provide models of perseverance and hope. Family stories make abstract values concrete; they embody a way of being in the world, and adolescents and young adults model themselves on these stories – this is the kind of person I am. These are the kind of people I come from.”
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What will our mini-memoir say to you? I hope it will leave you with these few thoughts: There is a lot of fun to be had within our family. There are more wonderful worlds and times ahead of us. Good times, bad times and everything in between are part of the picture. And there will always be space for you to be yourselves.
Love,
Me
Jill Lim is a mother of three and a book editor with Straits Times Press. She has written four children’s books, including My Colouring Book Is Ruined!, about a child with autism.
