By Guest Author: Michael Beaumont, The Lifelog Project
I recently completed a Life Log recording for a wonderful older woman. Her children, all in their 50s, had organised following her 90th birthday. Though the kids were paying for the Life Log it was indeed her present to them all. Initially she was very reluctant, because she “hadn’t done enough to talk about” and certainly not for the two hours I had allotted to conduct the interview.
Two hours in, and I went to close the computer, and she found a new voice. In the next thirty minutes she told me the most fascinating stories about her family and her history including little conspiratorial snippets that I would eventually edit from the final log. She had lived through two World Wars and the Great Depression. She lost her mother at 2, and step-mother a few years later and eventually a third mother and many step siblings later moved house 11 times in 10 years.
She had married a man described as quick to temper who went on to have an unhealthy relationship with both alcohol and poker machines. She raised children in a small country town and developed a love of art and other cultural pursuits, such that all of her children have a real enjoyment for a range of artistic expression.
At the end of the recording, all of which I found fascinating, she stood up and said, “well, that was so much fun, it’s like a thirty minute confessional, I said things I have never actually said before”. When I told her that we had been chatting for nearly 150 minutes, she was so surprised. “Don’t tell me I talked about myself all that time,” she giggled.
At 90 she still worried about her children, still marvelled at their achievements and was increasingly enthusiastic with each generation we talked about. I sat enchanted at the “ordinary” woman as she told her wonderful life story. Her great grandchildren will get such a great understanding of her life, her challenges and a little sense of the changing world in which we live. Her gift to her family was to help them understand their roots, understand her history in a way that can only be done in the first person.
Sources:
Michael Beaumont, The Life Log Project www.thelifelogproject.com.au
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