Introduction
The first time my daughter, Emily, drove off in the family car by herself, the ink on her driver’s license not yet dry, I took a deep breath and prayed that the driving school and I had taught her well. A year later, when it finally sank in that in order to go to college she’d have to leave home, I reminded myself that my job as a parent has been to give her the tools to succeed and then let her go. Even so, I admit that I worried: Did I forget to teach her something important? Was I done?
For years I’ve been thinking about when Emily and her younger brother, Ben, leave home for good. Will they be happy? Will they love their jobs? Will they be money-wise? Will they find love? Will they eat their vegetables? I hope that when they head off into the world, they will be ready. It’s not that I have all the answers or that they couldn’t find their own ways, far from it. But when Emily and Ben leave the nest, I want them to go with the counsel of loved ones.
Emily and Ben know that their family elders have learned a few things about life. The diversity of our styles, interests and appetites makes for a wonderfully rich blend of insights and talents. For instance, their seventy-seven-year-old grandmother keeps herself mentally and physically fit by traveling the country competing in herding trials with her eager border collies. One of their uncles, president of Ben & Jerry’s for many years, works to make “business ethics” real. One generous grandfather has tirelessly volunteered in his community all his life. Other relatives have been strong and wise enough to find happiness in some unusual ways. They all have something to teach, be it about love, money, health or even how to make people laugh.
Bits of this advice come out when we assemble as a family on holidays or at reunions, but to be honest, much of it doesn’t. Life lessons don’t necessarily come up naturally. No one ever asks, “Would you like some pie...and the secret to a happy marriage?”
After deciding on a college, Emily began feeling the excitement and nervousness that come with leaving home and the idea of being on her own. I started thinking about how to mark the occasion of her high school-to-college transition in a personal way. I wanted her to know that her family will always be here for her, ready to share what we know about life, when she wants to hear it.
While brainstorming ways to tap some of her family’s insights about issues she may not be sure how to bring up or may not have specific questions about yet, we came up with the idea of an advice journal to collect the varied and valuable wisdom of the people important to her. Emily and I co-wrote the journal with questions that satisfied both her wish for adult-to-adult dialogue and my parental instincts.
Other family members were pleased to be given a way to help celebrate her life transition and to show their ongoing support. Some wrote in the journal while visiting us. Others emailed us bits to paste in. We snail-mailed it to a few long-distance relatives for some wonderful handwritten entries. I kept notes on what I wanted to say and wrote them in at the end. Soon the journal was full of life lessons and advice. We presented it to Emily as a high school graduation gift.
We all feel good about Emily taking the wisdom of several generations with her to a new life in college and beyond. She is glad to have the journal’s familiar voices with her while far from home. We also see the book as an invitation for Emily to talk with us more in depth about life issues as she experiences them in the future. Who knows, maybe she’ll pass the journal along to her own daughter some day to show what her great-relatives had on their minds. We do know that we have started a new family tradition.
We offer you this fill-in version of Words to Live By for you to use as you wish. We encourage you to take this opportunity to share your wisdom with someone you love. Whether one person fills it out or many, we know it will be treasured.
Kate Marshall
Words to Live By: A Journal of Wisdom for Someone You Love, Emily & Kate Marshall, Broadway Books, 2005
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