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As we began this blog with a tale of the town of Sisters, Ore., and their annual quilt show, it seems only appropriate that we end with images from this year’s wonderful fabric fest.

IN ADDITION TO THE FEATURES EXPECTED OF GENEALOGY SOFTWARE, my  first version of Family Tree Maker had an unexpected one: A place to enter notes for each person.

Over the years I’d heard our mother tell many tales of her parents, aunts, uncles and cousins she’d grown up with in Chicago. I could recognize stories I’d heard before — Oma, as we all called her in her later years, was very consistent in her recollections. But I couldn’t have told them on my own (I hadn’t met even one of those relatives).

So one June when my husband was on an extended work trip, I made a deal with Oma: Each night, I’d call her at 7 p.m., after dinner and before any favorite TV shows. I’d give her the name of a relative, she’d say whatever came to mind, and I would strap on my telephone headset and type like crazy.

© MOLLY MARTIN

After we made it through Uncle Mike and Aunt Delia and cousin Jackie Breen and all the rest, we started in on her life: “What’s your earliest memory?” The next night: “And then what happened?” And onwards. She told about her family, friends, neighborhoods, jobs, moves, houses, children’s births, life, lives and deaths.

Before Oma died, she’d gifted us with more than 50 stories, and I’d started pairing them with old family photos. I try to give one story to my family each Christmas, printing 20-plus copies for my siblings, their children, and now their grandchildren. I put each story in 3-hole-punched plastic sleeves and presented the first (above right) in a binder along with that person’s family tree (also via Family Tree Maker).

Oma’s nine years gone now, but her stories live on, for all of us.

STORYTELLING | by SHERRY STRIPLING

WHEN MY FIDDLE-PLAYING FATHER DIED LAST SPRING, the universal response from friends was regret over what they hadn’t said or done.

These friends, mostly younger musicians, treated him like gold ― taking him to concerts, making over his tunes, dancing with him. Regrets were the last emotion my father would have wanted.

© SHERRY STRIPLING

“Why didn’t I visit him that last day at the hospital?” “Why didn’t I bake that pecan pie that I promised?” “I should have learned more of his tunes.”

So I created a “No Regrets box” for his memorial celebration. We invited people to write down anything left unsaid, anything left undone on a piece of paper, put it in the box ― and then consider it done when my sister and I burned the notes in a beach fire near the old family home.

The response was astounding. People lined up in front of the regrets box. We got urgent calls the next day:  “I remembered another one. Is it too late to add it?”

Two months later, my sister and I read the notes and burned them one by one, watching the ashes fall into burning coals.

“I regret I didn’t dance with Lee more.” “I regret not staining your fiddle again as you had asked.” “I wish I had been as open and friendly and grateful as you, Lee.” “I regret not spending more time studying what a kind man you were, Lee, and learning to be one more myself.”

We cried with almost every note. Afterwards, we felt refreshed, but also determined.

It was clear people understood our father as he was: “A sweet, gentle soul.” But the notes also reminded us to waste no time in telling people we love them. Burning regrets helps, but it’s better to cut them off at the pass.

LONG BEFORE iPods and built-in DVD players, American kids had to find ways to pass the time in the family car.

SOURCE: iSTOCKPHOTO.COM

During the 1960s and early 1970s, my younger brothers and I were three of those kids. Books, crosswords, card games and art projects were part of Mom’s bag of time-passing tricks. But it was our Dad who made the miles fly by between Massachusetts and Illinois; Indiana and California. Here are the activities I remember fondly:

• Singing rounds of nonsense songs that Dad probably learned working at summer camps in the ’40s and ’50s. “B-I-N-G-O,” “Go tell Aunt Rhody,” “I’m my own Grandpa,” are a few that we remember. Silly, yes, but we worked hard to memorize all the verses and we each had our favorite car-trip song.
• Dad created a ridiculous game called “Turkey”, with points earned based on the first letter of any farm animal we spotted. “Horse” earned 8 points since “H” is the eighth letter of the alphabet (chickens and cows, 3 points; pigs, 16 points, etc). To win automatically, one needed to see a turkey, 50 points. You can only imagine how seldom this happened, if ever. But we still kept hoping a turkey farm was just around the next bend.
• Dad crafted another wild mealtime game at supermarkets along the way. He gave everyone 50 cents to $1 for our under-$10 family lunch. The game was to shop for food and trade, share or combine our ingredients to create a meal. This sounds pretty sad, but actually it was a blast.

While it may not have been super-healthy, we sure had a fun summer vacation tradition, and we never realized how much our folks had to pinch pennies to pull off the trip in the first place. Even though our journeys were completely low-tech and low-budget, they inspired a lifetime of stories that my brothers and I still tell today. Sometimes I wish my own two sons could experience those summers. I bet I’d never again hear one of them say, “I’m bored” or “When are we getting there?”

SUMMER VISITS WITH BELOVED FRIENDS AND FAMILY are a great time to add to your oral-history collection. But don’t let good weather tempt you outside to record.

Chirping birds that charm you now will annoy you as you listen to the recording. Most recorders favor every decibel of airplanes, trucks and slamming doors over the details of golden memories.

National Public Radio’s StoryCorps has helped more than 50,000 people share stories since 2003. Among the recording tips the Corps offers:

Recording equipment

• Go simple with a cell phone, a tape recorder, video camera or computer.
• Go upscale with recommended digital recorders: Marantz PMD661 or the more portable Edirol R-09 (which I’ve used for years and recommend).

Choose a quiet location

• Pick a carpeted room over areas with reflective surfaces or noisy appliances.
• Shut off or remove anything that could make noise, including clocks and radios.

Test your equipment

• Wear headphones so you can hear what the recorder hears.
• Ask sample questions, test how the answers sound, then push record and begin for real.

Use a microphone

• Hold the microphone about 7 inches from your subject’s mouth.
• Use a light touch to avoid “mic-handling” sounds.

You’ll find these tips and much more in StoryCorps’ free, downloadable Do-It-Yourself kit, including interview tips and a good question generator. Don’t forget Lifestyle Insights’ earlier look at the art of the follow-up question.

Happy visiting!

EVERY EASTER I REMEMBER A LESSON I learned when skiing in the Canadian Rockies with a group of burly backwoods men.

I wasn’t too worried about the Telemark skiing or the helicopter lift into the mountains. But I had my concerns about spending a week in a tiny canvas yurt with all of these great big men. And that was before I realized that we would be able to hear but not see each other as our wet, rank long underwear draped like seaweed from pillar and post.

Those fears came to a head the very first night. Lying wide awake long after the snorers were asleep, I heard one of the men crawling across the floor. He’d rustle in someone’s private gear, and then continue his crawl to the next bag.

“Oh, brother,” I thought. “This is going to be a long week.”

The next morning I waited for the men to discover what might be missing from their things. Nothing was gone, but something was gained: Easter eggs, chocolate, delicious and plentiful. We spent the next 20 minutes searching through kettles and socks for more, as Gus, the biggest and burliest of them all, sat and watched, delighted by his 2 a.m. stealth.

These men were former school mates. In between yearly reunions like this, they were scattered all over the frozen north. Lying in my bunk, cloaked by dangling long-johns, I listened all week as they supported each other’s trials of the previous year, showing especial tenderness to the most vulnerable in their group, a guy who had struggled with alcohol.

And once again, I learned: You can’t judge a man by his John Wayne walk.

CYCLING THE SAME RURAL ROADS within a 25-mile radius of my house for 25 years has given me time to ponder the cycles of life.

I don’t change inside my helmet. But outside old farmers give way to young families. Kids playing ball in the yard lean against cars in the driveway “courting and sparking” before what feels like a season has passed.

© iSTOCKPHOTO.COM

Thoughts come:

• We would take better care of ourselves if we realized how we cling to mobility in old age.
• The frustration of not getting projects done with toddlers at our feet is fleeting compared to how long the empty nester putters alone.
• What might I have accomplished if I hadn’t spent so much time observing other people’s lives as I spin by?

Together those thoughts lead me to a research article called “Whatever Happened to ‘What Might Have Been’ “, in which Laura A. King and Joshua A. Hicks report how people respond when they reach that time in life when they regret “lost possible self.”

Somewhere in mid-life, we are forced to come to terms that our youthful dream of being the butcher, the baker or the candlestick maker with pewter pieces at Le Musée du Louvre is not going to happen.

These authors suggest there are two roads that veer past these regrets to happiness:

• Let go of what might have been to focus on the goals you have chosen to accomplish.
• Reach a true emotional maturity by understanding that the complexity of life, including disappointment, leads to greater self awareness and growth.

I might suggest a third road: Incorporate all that you’ve learned into a new dream. But the sun is out — and my bicycle calls.

WHEN I WAS SENTENCED TO BE MY FAMILY’S DESIGNATED HOUSE PAINTER years ago, it didn’t take long for me to discover that painting can be:

© iSTOCKIMAGE.COM

1. A form of mediation 
2. More than a little trippy

Maybe it’s the fumes, the hours of isolation or my choice of music, but my mind goes all over the place when I paint.

Some of those thoughts settle in the room forever, like sanding dust. Every time I enter the room from then on, I’m taken back to whatever was going on in my life at the time I was painting.

At my late grandparents’ house, which we rent out, I get whiffs of these memories:

• High-ceiling living room, Los Angeles Olympic Games, which I watched from atop a ladder
• Blistered west exterior, the runaway border collie pup who picked me out mid-paint job and said, “You’ll do!”
• Upstairs turquoise bedroom, my mother sorting through her old school papers in a final cleanout

The sensation is even more intense when I’m painting over the same spot in back-to-back years (bad renters). I get total flashbacks ― sight, smell, emotion ― similar to how a surgeon releases vivid memories by cutting into an old scar.

I can steer these thoughts by making sure I’m listening to upbeat music or TV programs. It’s harder when people come in, see you’re captive and confess their life woes.

My most recent project was my basement walls and ceiling in anticipation of a replacing an old TV with a home theater. Painting into the early hours of morning, I listened to a documentary on a Norwegian explorer trapped on northern ice floes for 3½ years.

Big mistake! The room looks great, but popcorn tastes like whale blubber.

MY MOTHER IS 88 YEARS OLD. She lives a thousand miles from me. Though my father died 10 years ago, my mom still lives in the house where I grew up, still drives short distances. I feel enormously blessed by her independence and good health.

© iSTOCKPHOTO.COM

Although she’s far away, I’ve discovered that I can help her maintain her health by preparing delicious, wholesome meals, which she can freeze and heat later. So with each change of season, I hop a plane for a long weekend of cooking.

The first thing I make is a fresh batch of vegetable-rich chicken soup, which I believe cures all ills. The soup is substantial enough to enjoy for supper, and always on hand if my mom feels under the weather. A curried squash gratin makes for a warming meal in the fall. Beef bourguignon does nicely on a cold winter’s night. Spring inspires a stew with lamb, fresh peas and potatoes.

Best of all, we have fun. We shop together and chat while working in the kitchen. She likes to be my sous chef. I show her a few easy culinary techniques. We reminisce and talk about the kids. I learn things I didn’t know about her childhood and the early years of her marriage over pots of simmering stock and pans with caramelizing onions. It’s the kind of women’s work that nourishes us both.

By the time I catch my plane back home, my mom has enough homemade meals to last until the season turns again, and I am full of stories, sustained by an abiding belief that cooking is an act of love.

I WAS DRIVING TO WORK ON A BLEAK GRAY MORNING WHEN TWO SQUIRRELS, hot on each other’s little heels, dashed across the road right in front of my car.

© iSTOCKPHOTO.COM

I slammed on my brakes but only one squirrel emerged alive, beating my driver’s side wheel by inches.

Discouraged thoughts went through my head as I sat for a long, desolate moment slumped forward against my steering wheel.

It was bad enough that I was going to work. Did I have to start off the day killing something? Were the squirrels rivals, buddies, sweethearts?

Just then I looked up to see a city utility worker standing by her truck 10 feet from the passenger side of my front window. Her expression was intense but inscrutable.

With her eyes locked on mine, she pulled my view up to a knoll on her side of the street. There sat Squirrel No. 2, twitching his tail, impatiently waiting for me to move on so he could catch up with Squirrel No. 1, who was safely on my side of the road.

Zoom! I returned my eyes to the worker in record time. She met my huge grin with a slight nod and softening smile.

I suppose the sun didn’t really break out. I wasn’t really greeted with flowers and a raise at work. But I felt buoyed by gifts all day:

The squirrels were alive. And I’d touched hearts with a human being without exchanging a word.