Generations: Make 2025 a year to remember, record personal and family stories – Bemidji Pioneer

One day last week, I had a few things to do downtown. It was a fair winter day and the sidewalks weren’t as dangerously icy as the previous day.

I dropped off a few things at a thrift store and then found myself in the Antique Mall. I don’t collect antiques, so I wasn’t looking for anything in particular, but there were Christmas trees and ornaments, bell and star and angel cookie cutters, and various other yuletide items.

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Then I knew why I was there. For weeks I’d been checking various stores for bird ornaments, but dinosaurs and Paw Patrol characters are more popular these days. I hadn’t seen a single bird ornament anywhere.

A few years ago, I started buying bird ornaments. Birds seem so much more fitting and even Christmasy than dinosaurs; they’re natural on trees. When one of the vendors asked if I was looking for anything special, “bird ornaments,” came out. “The old fragile ones with real feathers,” I clarified.

Courtesy / Sue Bruns

Then my story spilled out. “My mom used to have these old bird ornaments. We’d put them on the tree each year. The Christmas after she died, my dad took the ornaments to the cemetery and hung them on her tombstone.” Of course, winter claimed all of them.

I had summarized the story as tightly as I could, and, although I was talking about something that happened in 1989, the memory was still raw. I started tearing up. The vendor empathized, but no one’s display had old-fashioned bird ornaments.

I wrote about mom’s bird ornaments in my column back in 2019, about the time I started collecting new bird ornaments and making them the focal point of my Christmas tree. It was easier back then.

I was finding replica ornaments with delicate bodies and real feather tails, soft-sculpture birds dressed in cute hats and scarves, carved wooden birds and clip-on painted ceramic cardinals. I bought as many different kinds as I could find. It seemed they filled the tree.

But this year the tree didn’t seem full enough, and there were no bird ornaments at Target, Menard’s or any of the other places I checked. And anyway, to be more authentic, I needed old birds, birds like the ones that Dad left on Mom’s grave, fragile birds with real feather tails, like the ones I used to hang on the tree in our living room.

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Courtesy / Sue Bruns

I checked out both antique malls and didn’t find any antique bird ornaments — lots of other interesting things, like TV trays exactly like a set my mother had back in the 1960s, but no ornaments.

That unplanned trip through the antique malls took me down memory lane. I was glad I’d written about Dad’s pure act of love and remembrance that Christmas, but I realized that there are a lot of other memories I haven’t captured — personal life stories, family histories.

I’ve taught writing classes that have focused on memoir writing and family history, but I haven’t done as good a job of capturing my own family memories as I should.

Having taught writing to high school students for over 20 years, including focused memoir writing and capturing oral histories, I’ve been able to share in my students’ stories to the extent that they’ve become part of my own life story.

Like the high school girl who asked her grandfather about his experiences in the service during World War II. He had never spoken to the family about being a soldier, and no one had asked — until his granddaughter did for a school assignment.

He guided her into his bedroom and brought out a metal box from the closet. One by one, he removed items from the box and shared the stories attached to them. She wrote a beautiful story about him and his service and memories of the war — memories that would’ve been buried with him had she not asked.

My New Year’s resolution is to record my personal stories and my family’s history. It’s too late for many of the questions I wish I’d asked Mom or Dad, but I’ll draw on my older brother and younger sister and on my son and daughter and add their memories to my own.

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For the past several years, I’ve been writing stories about other people, their lives, their businesses and their histories. I love telling other people’s stories, but there are so many stories out there that I can’t possibly tell. Now it’s time to take a break from free-lancing and focus on my own stories.

Courtesy / Sue Bruns

I invite you to join me in this endeavor. I’m hoping you just need a nudge, some ideas, some encouragement to keep at it. If we don’t record our stories now, then when?

Please join me at 11 a.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 14, at the History Center for a work session. Come ready to write. If you don’t know where to begin, I’ll give you some ideas. If you can sustain the enthusiasm to continue to write, we’ll meet monthly.

I’ll be doing similar meetings at the

Bemidji Senior Center — the first one is

at 1 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 7.

Whether this becomes a monthly exercise or not depends on you. I hope you’ll commit to capturing your stories NOW for your own satisfaction and for your friends and family.

Make 2025 a year to remember.