A Journal

I went to a wonderful Family History fireside last night with David McCullough as guest speaker. He was amazing. He told of finding journals and how that brought these people from the past into the present, making them alive again. No one lives in the past, they lived in their present. You must learn to understand their present if you want to know them. He told us how he found a diary of a US ambassador to France during the times of Napoleon when Paris was engulfed in civil war. He found this diary in the Library of Congress of all places. He then said to write a journal and give it to your library or college or even the Library of Congress and then you will be forever quoted because it will be the only diary in existence from our time. Then I thought of what I will leave behind. I need to write things down. I have wanted to organize a project for a while now. Both of my children have been named after a great grandparent. I want my children to know who these amazing people were. I am hoping to get stories of them from the living children, that would be my parents, aunts, David's parents, aunts and uncle. If we don't write things down in some form, think of what we will be depriving future generations of. A young John Adams wrote in a small book with tiny script about wanting to read about the world and famous authors. He even wrote at the age of twenty about probably being a man of little consequence. We never know if we will be influential in the coming years. But I am grateful a young man decided to write his thoughts down so he comes to life for us years after his death. So I will write something for my children and my children's children, so when they read my words I can live again for them.