Don't Make a New Year's Resolution This Year - Instead Talk with Your Mom or Grandma

If you want to change your life for the better, abandon all resolutions, diets, and new workout regimes.

Instead, talk with your mother or your grandmother. [1]

Ask her open-ended questions about her life. Record the conversation. Transcribe it and share the stories with your family and loved ones. I guarantee you, your life will change for the better - probably in strange and wondrous ways you cannot foresee.

How do I know?

I have done it myself.

My mother - Grandma Marcy to my children - was for me an exemplar of strength, tenderness, courage and ever-renewing love.?

She died in 2008. Yet, I still draw inspiration from her enthusiasm for life. She never gave up on any of us in the family. She savored her daily rituals and never abandoned what was for her the sacred calling to learn and discover.

Every day, she is here in my heart to steady me and call me to live out my deepest values. To honor my own agency. To make "love" a verb, not an abstract noun.

She is there - especially when circumstances leave me feeling broken or not enough or frustrated or simply weary.

Thank you, Mom.

Below, I share the stories I learned from my mother. They come from two 90-minute conversations Yes. Just 3 hours. Not a huge investment of time. Please read the stories and judge for yourself if it was worth it.

And please think about what your mother or grandmother might tell you -- and how important it might be for future generations to hear their "voices" in the stories you might record.

You may feel awkward or anxious or anticipate your mother will not want to talk about her life. My mother definitely did not. I had to be persistent. She dismissed the whole idea initially, saying, in essence, "Who would want to read about my life?"

I told her that her grandchildren would.

At that, she softened, then relented and eventually opened up. I didn't push her to talk about parts of her life she wanted to keep private. I just kept asking her questions about the stories she remembered that really resonated for her. And guess what, she not only told me, she enjoyed telling me. And one story would lead to another. Naturally.

It was an extraordinary experience. Just to hear her talk about what it was really like to be Marcy.

I am so grateful I did this. I think you should consider doing it, too.

( If you want some resources to help you learn how to do an interview and help your mother or grandmother tell their stories, there are some wise words for you on the website of a wonderful nonprofit called Story Corps.)

Here are my mother's stories. They are narrated in Grandma Marcy's voice -- as I recreated it from the cassette tape recordings I made with her in the 1980s.

Grandma Marcy

Don’t be fooled by the surface. A grandmother is not only a grandmother. Inside a 77-year-old woman live all her incarnations. A mother and a wife. A young woman and a girl. A trombone player. An eater of bread-and-butter-leaf sandwiches. All that I ever was exists in all that I am. Like those Russian nesting dolls, I fit perfectly within myself – each experience stacked one inside the other.

Listen. What follows are only a few of those experiences. Some things I remember from my youth.

?I am running now.

It is December 1942. War grips many parts of the world. My brother Bill is in the Signal Corps. He’s a telegrapher. My future husband Larry will fly bombing missions in Europe for the Army Air Corps. But I am not running from bombs, I am running to my job at the five and ten cent store. I’ve just finished swim team practice. I swim for Bucknell College in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. I am 17 years-old.

I am running fast. The winter air is bitter cold, there is ice on the sidewalk and my hair is wet.

I didn’t have time to dry my hair properly today. It’s quite long and thick. As I run, I begin to hear a clicking noise. The strands of my hair have become brittle icicles, and with every stride, with every plume of steam I exhale, I can hear the clicking of my icicle hair. My head has become an icy rattle. I feel like I am a part of winter, and it is a part of me.

?I am crying now.

And I am very angry. The year is 1932 and my sister Nancy has just ruined my doll. We don’t have a lot of toys you know. And for Christmas my Aunt Mary gave me this big doll. My very own baby doll. It has arms and a head made out of china, real china, not cheap celluloid. And my doll is big, nearly as big as me. I’m seven years old. So that gives you an idea.

You see, I keep the doll upstairs in my bedroom. And Nancy, that’s not her real name, we just call her Nancy? instead of Anna, which is her real name. Anyway, Nancy wakes up from her nap and grabs my beautiful doll and crawls along the hall pulling it. Then, when she gets to the stairway, she drops it. And my doll’s head cracks on the steps.

I could kill her. But I won’t.

I’m the oldest daughter. William is two years older than? me. We always call him William, but his friends call him Bill. He and I were born in East Mawkchunk, Pennsylvania. Then comes my younger sister Agnes, three years after me, and Nancy three years after her. They were both born here in our house in Preston.

I know where babies come from, you know. When my sister was born, I asked my grandma. And she told me. She said they found Nancy in the washtub. You know, the wooden washtub with the scrubbing board. She said the stork put Nancy there.

I think Nancy should still sleep in that washtub.

?I am talking now.

Talking to my son, Steven, in the living room of our house in Santa Barbara, California. The year is 1985. He is my youngest son, and at the grand old age of 26, he is interviewing me about my life. I don’t really want to do it, but he insists. He calls it “oral history,” but I feel self-conscious. Who will want to hear the words of a 59-year-old woman talking about her childhood?

Your grandchildren will, he says.

I tell him that I grew up in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania in a little place called Preston. Only 30 or 40 families lived there. It was a one-street town, and that street, South Main, was made of cobbles. A street-car ran up and down the middle of it, but there was so little other traffic that in the winter-time, when the snow was packed down hard on the cobbles, we rode our sleds right there in the street.

Most people in Preston were Irish. Almost all of the men were coal miners. There were the Sweeneys and the Lenaghans and the Monaghans and the Callaghans and the Gilligans. The Irish were very warm and friendly people. During the Depression years, when the mines closed down, there were some pretty barren periods for the miners’ families. My mother would cook up huge pots, twice the size of the biggest pot I have in the kitchen now. She would make soup or stew. And she’d wait till it got dark and then we would take the pot over to a neighbor’s house if my mother knew that they were having a hard time, or if there was any sickness.

Neighbors went back and forth to help out with the work, watch the children, wash the clothes or whatever. And if anyone died, you always baked something. Baked a ham or whatever and went over to offer your services.

But in spite of the hard times all around, my whole childhood was very happy. Looking back on it, I would say that we probably were upper lower-class. But I felt very rich because, by comparison to those around us, we had everything we needed.

?I’m playing kick-the-can now.

Can’t you hear? It makes a racket. The hollow tin clattering on cobble stones. And the kids hollering. Watch out. Here it comes. Kick it!

It’s 1934, summer-time. I love the summer. As soon as school finishes, I kick off my shoes and go barefoot till September. All the kids in the neighborhood pretty much live outside. Even at night we play. Under the streetlight. There’s only one streetlight in Preston, but it’s right across from our house. Perfect for night games.

What’s that? You don’t know what kick-the-can is? Come off it. Everybody knows. OK, don’t worry, I’ll explain.

First, you get one of those big juice cans, 32-ounce size. And you have two teams, and someone draws a line across the street. Then you ty to score by kicking the can deep into the other kids’ territory. And everyone plays. Big ones and little ones. Girls and boys. The whole neighborhood.

Hey! Watch out! Kick it!

?I’m crashing a bicycle right now.

First the front wheel gets the wobbles, then the back one, and then I start tilting over until I have to jump free from the bicycle and let it fall to the cobbles. I land on my feet, but my brother William bursts into laughter. So do I. He’s 16 years-old and I’m 14. It’s our first time riding a bicycle. The year is 1939.

I go to high school now. Hanover High. You know, the one with the indoor swimming pool. Best high school in Wyoming Valley. I play trombone in the band. And when I’m a senior I’ll have the lead in the school play and edit the school newspaper. I’ll even finish first in my class. Not the way I planned it. Just turned out that way. I pretty much take life as it comes. Right now, I’m having a terrific time just learning how to ride a bike.

I never saw one until I was 10, and then my brother and I had to wait until a fellow decided to start a business renting bikes in Ashley. That’s about a mile from our house. Anyway, it cost a quarter to rent one for half a day. So William and I saved our money and went down today to finally try it out. Funny thing was, once we paid the money to rent it, we had to wheel it home because we still didn’t know how to ride. Now we’re practicing going up and down the street, wobbling all over the place. The neighbor kids are laughing. But we don’t care. We’re laughing, too. We love it.

?

I’m swimming now.

Well, dog-paddle really. But when there’s nobody to teach you how, you have to teach yourself. That’s what all us kids do. The year is 1933. I’m eight years-old.

I’m up at Rezy,? that’s what we call the reservoir. It’s halfway up the mountain, about two or three miles from our house. To get to Rezy, you have to walk along trails in the woods. But first we have to do our chores before we do anything else.

You can eat off the floor at our hose. That’s what my grandmother says. It’s that clean. My mother has a schedule to keep it that way. Monday’s wash day. Tuesday, she irons. Wednesday, she cleans. Thursday, she bakes. Friday, she sews. Saturday, she goes shopping. And Sunday, everybody goes to church, and we eat dinner at noon.

But my schedule in summer is simpler. It goes like this – first do my chores and then head for Rezy. We’re gone all day and we don’t even have to take anything to eat. In the summer, the mountain gives us our lunch. Blueberries and blackberries and wild strawberries and thorn berries. It’s easy to find bread and butter leaves, too. They’re big and wide, about two or three inches across, and they look like smooth, round, shiny grape leaves. Anyway, they have a nice taste – like a really thin slice of bread.

And after I’m done swimming today, I’m going to make bread and butter sandwiches with leaves on the outside and the blueberries on the inside. Dee-lish!

But the eating isn’t the main thing. You see, there’s a spill-over at the base of the reservoir. There’s a natural basin there. A rock wall catches the water and makes a pool. It’s about 25 yards across. Nice size. The water is deep. Cold as hell, too.

Whoops. Don’t tell my mother I said that.

Anyway, there’s this long, slanted rock wall beside the pool. And the rock wall is in the sunshine. And everyone stretches out there and warms up in the sun whenever they get too cold swimming. Like me right now.

Brrr. I just got out. My fingers are white and numb, and my skin is full of goose bumps. But the sun is warm, and now that I’m out, the coldness of my body and the warmth of the sun make the whole world feel tingly.

?

My stomach is aching now.

?I’m eight years-old and I’m not just sick. I’m also really worried. You see, I’m afraid that if I tell my mother what I’ve done, she’ll kill me. And if I don’t tell her, I’m afraid I might die.

The problem with green apples is that they don’t change color when they get ripe. And so it’s hard to be sure when to pick them – especially when you take them from the old, abandoned apple orchard.

We go by the orchard sometimes on the way home from the mountain. The house that once stood there has crumbled to nothing. All that’s left is a broken-down old brown barn and about six wild-looking apple trees.

We’re always wondering when to pick the apples, trying to figure out when they’ll be ripe. Today, I walked there alone and looked at the apples hanging big and beautiful in the sunshine. And I decided. Those apples were ready. So I picked six of them and ate them all. Right there in the orchard. They tasted a little bitter, but I kept telling myself that they were ripe. And it would all be okay.

By the time I got home, I had a stomach ache. And I remembered my mother scolding us, saying if you eat the apples before they’re ripe you’ll die because they’re poison.

I don’t want to die. But I don’t want my mother to be angry with me, either. So I’ve decided to take care of it myself.

I get the castor oil from the medicine chest. Mother gives it to us for just about everything. I take a deep breath and I put my mouth to the bottle. Gulp, gulp, gulp. Yeech. I drink half of it. It tastes awful.

In case you didn’t know, castor oil is a cathartic. That’s a big word that means it makes you have to go poop. A lot.

The next day, I still feel miserable, but I’m alive. I don’t think I’ll eat another green apple for about a thousand years.

?

I am writing now.

I’m a reporter for Novak’s Daily Newspaper, which gets published about once a week.

I’m nine. The year is 1934.

My brother and I do the newspaper together. He has a printing set. Hundreds of little rubber letters. He puts them together in a little holder and then dips it on the ink pad and prints it. It takes a long time, but William is good at it. Patient. I write the stories and he sets them up. It takes a week to do one sheet. But we do have big capital letters for the headlines.

This week the top story is about how our cat singed his whiskers on the stove.

William and I have also set up Novak’s Free Library. Anyone in the family can take books out of the library. My mother and her relatives donated the books. I’m the librarian. If you fill out a slip, you may borrow a book, too.

I can even recommend one, if you like. You see, I read everything. Whenever I can. Wherever I can. My mother sometimes gets angry with me because I take books up to my room and read at night under the covers.

She says, “You’ve got your head in a book all day long, you’re going to ruin your eyes.”

But I don’t just read under the covers. Sometimes I take my book and go hide behind the clothes in her closet. I sneak in the back and pull her long dresses around me so? no one can see. There’s just enough light to? read, and I can hide there for a couple of hours. Sometimes I go up in the attic or down in the cellar, too, but wherever I am, I always have a book.

?

I am watching now.

My son sits in our living room, framed by an enormous picture window which shows a riot of white pampas plumes overseen by olive mountains and a blue sky stolen from a Van Gogh painting. Had I imagined as a child that I would be living here in winter-less California, the mother of five clever children, all with college degrees, I would have dismissed it as an impossible fantasy. Yet, life is full of surprises. My parents did not have the chance to go to? college. My daughter, Ashley, became a distinguished professor.

The year is 1985. I tell my son Steven some things he should know about his grandparents, my mother and father.

Both of my parents were deprived of an education. When my mother was 12,? her father was killed in a railroad accident. She was the oldest of 8 children. She cried bitterly when she was taken out of school. She had reached 6th grade and she wanted to keep going, but there was no one to take care of her sisters and brothers and run the house because her mother had to work. Lena had no choice but to leave school.

Her loss made education all the more precious to her. And she wanted us to go as far as we could with our own studies.

My dad finished 2nd grade when his father died. I think he was 8 years-old. He was sent down into the coal mines as a breaker boy to help support his family. He was the oldest of six or eight children. So he was determined that all of us would go to college and that he would do whatever he could to help us.

?

I am walking now

With my father and my brother out in the woods. I am six years-old. The year is 1931.

Dad is very tall – 6-foot-4 – and very strong, and when I walk with him, he makes me feel tall and strong, too. But really, I am only a little girl.

He doesn’t talk a lot. And he doesn’t make much sound at all when he walks in the snow. But you always know he’s there. Gentle and powerful.

Suddenly, I hear my brother yell. He’s fallen down somewhere, and I can’t see him. Dad holds me back with his arm and tells me this may be one of those places where an old mine might have caused the ground to give way. Dad says we must be careful. Our weight may cause the ground to collapse further and bury William. Dad tells William to keep still, then Dad grabs a small tree. He bends the tree over so he can use it to reach William – like a lifeguard reaching out a pole to a drowning person.

But the tree won’t reach far enough. William cries out again.

So Dad grabs the tree at the base and rips it right out of the ground.

My mouth is open wide. I can’t shut it. I don’t say a word. I just keep watching.

Dad lowers the tree to William. And it reaches! Then Dad pulls William out of the hole.

Dad gives us both a hug and we head for home without a word being spoken.

I’m so happy. But all? I can think of is my? friend Flossy who lives across the street. She fell into one of those holes and was buried for about 10 minutes before they dug her out. Everyone thought she would die, but she didn’t. That was good. But Flossy couldn’t hear very well after the accident, and that was bad.

Sometimes, heroes are in books. I like reading about men and women who are brave. But today, my hero is walking next to me. My dad. I don’t really know a word for the feeling, but I feel warm inside and safe. And when we get home, I give my mother a great big hug.

?

I am remembering now.

The year is 2002. I am 77 years-old.

In December, it gets pretty cold in the Wyoming Valley. In the mornings, when I was a kid, I’d wrap myself in blankets just to run to the bathroom. There was no central heating. It was so cold the milk used to freeze in the bottles, and it would rise two or three inches and push the cap out. Sometimes I’d get sent ?to bring the milk in and my hand would stick to the metal doorknob. If I pulled it loose, sometimes the skin came off.

But it didn’t matter how cold I was when it got to be a couple days before Christmas. That’s when my dad used to go up into the woods and he’d chop down the biggest tree he could haul back home. For us to decorate.

Maybe that’s why I like Christmas trees so much. They’re part of my life. Always have been. A tradition, I guess you could say. My tradition. And traditions, like stories, are important because they make it easy to remember.

Remember this. A grandmother is not only a grandmother. Inside her, live many incarnations. I’ve shared a few today. There are many others. A welder who built huge ships during? the war. A ballroom dancing teacher. A student of Shakespeare. All that I ever was is still inside me.? And if you’re curious, all you need do is ask.

?Some more about Marcy here.

?[1} Of course, talking with fathers, grandfathers, uncles, aunts or any older relatives would be worthwhile. I have focused on mothers and grandmothers here because I have an example to share. Don't feel limited. Ask yourself whom among your older relatives, friends or neighbors you feel drawn to, whom you are most curious about. Then seek them out. Don't be shy. Remember, it is a precious and tender affirmation to ask for someone's stories - and to listen to them with presence and heart.