Return to the Old Watering Hole--Friends and Dreams are There to Meet You! (African Proverb)

According to the dictionary, a memoir is a personal reminiscence and narrative of life’s events based on the writer’s personal experiences.  It is a series memory vignettes.  Why does anyone take the time and effort to write a memoir?  I can only address the question from the perspective of my own motivations.

A memoir is very personal, very self-centered, and, therefore, must involve a certain amount of ego-indulgence.  You must have a rather large ego to believe that someone may be interested in reading about the personal events in your life and perspective facts about family history.  I write this for future generations in order to help those generations add a personal perspective to Sam Arnold as a person, a personal history of the times, I lived and a perspective of our family’s history. 

When my father and mother passed away, I found pieces and parts of their lives and those of other ancestors told in pictures (often without names or circumstances attached), clippings, letters and documents stored away in the attic.  They left many unanswered questions.  I can only provide an educated guess and attempt to piece together what I think their stories were or might have been.  I want to leave you with better facts than were left to me.  It can be viewed as a duty for and to the generations that follow.  It is a project of love.
Most of us wait too long to ask the important questions about family heritage and personal memories.  God gives us overlapping generations whose stories of the past and present could easily be linked by asking the older generations to tell their stories, and to relive their memories and the stories told to them.  Sadly, in most cases, the questions never get asked until there is no one around to ask.  Younger generations are often bored with the stories told by the senior members of the family.  However, those that memories are their lives.  Young people by chronology are only beginning to assemble their memories.  Your memories will be your life

Life stories are a pieces of real history.  They represent a search for the right and the wrong decisions I have made in my life in order that others might perhaps learn something of value to them.  Life stories pinpoint, to the extent one’s memory allows, those life-changing turning points in life, and the people who have made a difference in their life.
Life stories provide a fantasy for those who follow as to how it must have been in times before.  The little pieces of history gave me insight into the personalities and events of my parents and grandparents.  I want to give my descendants as clear a picture of the events and times that shaped my life and generation, as well as a history of our family from a personal perspective.

Lives and events occur sequentially in the flow of time.  One day, one week, one year, one decade, one lifetime accumulating one after the other.  Time does march on.  Lives may be lived in linear time, but they are also a multi-leveled and multi-textured collage of experiences and meanings.  Memories are a patch work of the life—snap-shots.  Sometimes the real meaning of the various events are linked with other later events.  The true meanings and their long term affects are not revealed until later, when they are examined in the context of maturity and/or a life lived. 

Have a nice day!

Sam