Every family has its ways—most of us have our own “style” and even our own language. With our shared history (and that includes both blissfully pleasant and dysfunctionally stressful) and personal dynamics, it is impossible for a family to exist without developing its own folklore. In our family, much of our “lore” has developed around language, food and ordinary life events…
I have shared before that my kids and I like to play with language and words. It is very common for us to come up with nicknames, re-names and other versions of everyday words and phrases. Heaven help our friends who almost all get nicknames (and those nicknames stick forever!). Our family lore includes dishes like Deranged Chicken (my middle daughter’s mutation of Free Range Chicken) and Incubus Pie (an old-fashioned recipe, “Colonial Innkeeper’s Pie”) and it also includes those mishaps, misspeaks and mistakes that happen in every family.
One of these days, I keep promising myself I am going to start to write these things down. After all, even though I think I will remember them forever, I forget things all the time or my kids and I remember different versions of how cherished family folklore actually happened. Plus, as my kids grow up and have families and independent lives of their own, they will surely having more lore of their own to manage and forget about some of the stuff from their family of origin!
I would love to hear about some of your family lore or suggestions for getting the things we say and do as a family down onto paper or into files so they can be preserved for the future. Do you have ideas for how we can make sure that our cherished terms, nicknames, stories and history do not get lost as the kids grow up and the family changes?
See Also: Family History as Bedtime Stories