All of us have stories to tell about our lives. And many of us regret that we didn’t ask our parents and grandparents more questions about their personal stories.

Eventually it’s too late.

When I lived in California, I took several memoir-writing classes at the senior center. We would each bring in a short memoir to read out loud. One of my classmates was a World War II veteran. He was disabled from a leg wound he sustained in battle, but every week, he would stand and read a few more pages about his experiences. He planned to put them all together in book form for his grown children.

When I was very young, I saw World War I veterans marching in the Memorial Day parade. Today, I am surprised how old the Vietnam veterans look! There was also a woman in class who had been a child in Nazi Germany, another one who grew up in China and someone who fled with her family from the dust bowl of Oklahoma during the 1930s.

A special bond happens between people in a group like this from sharing these very personal memories. We laughed and we cried with each other. Often something that one person remembers resonates with others. There are common memories of ice delivery trucks, playing kick-the-can, catching fireflies, being poor and losing someone in the family.

I am now in a group called “Write for Fun” that meets on Mondays at the Renton Senior Center. The facilitator, Betty McClain, is also a dance instructor at the center. The group is growing and I am glad to have found it. It gives me the inspiration to keep writing my own memoirs.

I also enjoy hearing the stories of the citizens of Renton, such as 87-year-old Mert, who writes with great wit and vivid descriptions of his youth. He takes creative license with his tales, and tells us, “Most of my stuff is lies – I take a little from here and a little from there and put them together.”

Seventy-seven-year-old George often relates amusing tales of his boyhood when living in an Irish Catholic neighborhood. His father was with the Barnum and Bailey Circus and was also the stunt man for Johnny Weissmuller in the old Tarzan movies. His wife Susan recently wrote a tribute to a good friend who had passed away.

Joe, an 85-year-old Korean War veteran told us a story about his early involvement with a conservation club in Issaquah.

Renton resident Barbara, from Hawaii, was conceived in Honolulu on the day the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. She has vivid memories of her own and those told by her predecessors who had to deal with the missionaries. Barb read an amazing poem she had written as a 7-year-old child in Chicago.

Donna wrote about a Christmas tree that her family had cut down from the woods, and of her mixed feelings about the beauty of the lighted tree along with her sadness that the tree had to die for her pleasure.

Our facilitator, Betty also has fascinating adventures to share from her lifetime of experiences around the world in foreign cultures.

They are often the simple things that we remember – maybe on one day some 60 years ago – a powerful moment in time that helped to make us who we are today. It is also about our connections to national and international times of trauma – financial depressions and wars and tragedies like President Kennedy’s assassination and more recently, the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

I really believe that everyone has several stories that should be passed on to future generations. We all remember a good friend from grade school, the sorrow of burying a pet, being bullied, our first television, our first kiss.

Our memories are the most precious gifts we can leave for our children and grandchildren. Perhaps we all should start keeping a journal, from a very young age. There will be a creative writing class this summer through the Renton Community Center for youths ages 9 to 15.

Sometimes, I write my stories in the form of poetry. I would like to share this one with you:

“Flower Child”

I was never a flower child.
I am of a lost generation,
between the Greatest One and the Boomers.

I threw no petals on a moon-beam’s edge,
although my face was pressed with longing
at the window in the summer of love,
while inside I changed diapers and made lunch
In my own summer of discontent.

I marveled about Woodstock
In a rocking chair amid lullabies.

I sang no folk-songs.
I pounded no drums of protest for change.
I was never in a “sit in”, nor did I “drop out”.
I missed the communal dreams of growing corn
and shared love.

I played bridge, shared coffee with neighbors,
went to company picnics, bought new appliances
and new school clothes, and seldom read the paper.

I wore no miniskirts or tie-dyed shirts,
And worse, my hair was curly.

We took long drives with my husband’s
Nixon sticker on the car.

I don’t know what I believed
about the body count in Vietnam.
There seemed to be no time to really think.

Only a few years – and the path I chose –
kept me from being in sync with the times.
I had an unlined face and an unfurled spirit.

Although I was never a flower child,
sometimes, now in my own sixties,
I have a vision, where I am running with youthful grace,
and freedom through a field,
with flowers in my long straight hair.