You want to ask your parents about their childhood but you do not know what to ask

Sunday lunch, and the question you did not ask

It is Sunday. Your mom is at the table. The plates are cleared and there is a quiet moment.

You think about asking her what it was like when she was little. You almost do. Then someone asks about the drive home, and the moment goes.

On the way back you think, next time. You have thought that for years.

There is a small fear under it, too. What if you ask and she says "oh, it was normal," and that is the end of it?

Why "tell me about your childhood" goes nowhere

That question is too big. It asks a person to sum up eighteen years in one go. Nobody can, so they say "normal" and change the subject.

It is not that they do not want to talk. It is that the question gives them nothing to hold.

The other trap is waiting for the right time. There is no right time. The book says it plainly about a mother's story of the day you were born: if she is still here to ask, ask now. It is the last part of the record that is still open, and it closes.

Small questions open big stories

The shift is simple. Ask about one thing, on one day, in one place.

Here are questions from the book for a parent born in 1957. Pick three. Do not read them all at once.

For the early years: What did your school give out at milk time, and what did it come in? What was the name of your first teacher? How did you get to school, and who did you walk with?

For the middle years: What did your bicycle look like, and how far from home were you allowed to ride it? What did you do on a Saturday morning between waking up and lunch? Which show were you not allowed to watch, and did you watch it anyway?

For the teen years: What was the first record you bought with your own money? What was your first car, or whose car did you drive? Did you ever wait in a gas line, and what did your father say while you sat in it?

Dates help too. A person born in 1957 was six on November 22, 1963. Many schools sent children home early that day. Ask where they were when they heard. Ask about February 9, 1964, when about seventy-three million Americans watched the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show, as Smithsonian Magazine reports. Ask about July 20, 1969, when they were eleven or twelve. The Air and Space Museum tells how the country watched that night.

The basics most family history lists start with

Many lists online open with the same plain facts: full name, where they were born, the house they grew up in. Those are good starters, because they are easy. The book's blank pages ask them in a way that pulls a story along with the fact.

• What was your full name, as it was written on the day you were born?
• Where were you born, the town and the hospital if you know it? What day of the week was it?
• Where was your first house? What could you see from the front door?
• Which room was the television in, and where was the telephone?
• What did the kitchen smell like on a Sunday?
• Describe your mother in three words. Then your father.
• Who were your brothers and sisters, in order?
• Which neighbor do you remember best, and why?
• What is the first thing you remember? Not the story you were told. The one that is yours.

Deeper questions, for later in the talk

Searchers also look for "deep" questions. Save these for when the talk is warm, not for the first five minutes. They come from the last pages of the book.

• What did you think your life would look like at seventy?
• What were you wrong about? What were you right about?
• What was the best year, and why that one?
• What would you tell the child in your first memory?
• What did you do after school, and who decided?

Then do the most useful thing of all. Hold the pen yourself. Read a question, listen, write. People who will not write things down will often talk for an hour while you do.

The questions are already in this book

This is the problem The Year You Arrived: 1957 was written for. We like how it moves from telling to asking.

First Memories covers the early 1960s, from the toys to the Kennedy funeral to the Beatles. It ends with questions about school and two things worth digging for: your mother's version of the day you were born, and whatever your father never talked about.

The Schoolyard Years covers 1965 to 1969 and the moon landing, then asks about bicycles, chores and what they wanted to be.

Becoming a Teenager covers the end of the draft, the 1973 gas lines and turning eighteen in 1975, with questions about first records and first cars.

Your Own 1957 gathers it all into blank pages to fill in, from the day itself to turning seventy. The last page is for them to write something to you.

If this is for a birthday, see our page on a meaningful 70th birthday gift that is not a mug.