It's been a while

I'm feeling somewhat inspired by a fact that I recently learned about my mother. Apparently, for a period of time beginning shortly after parents were married (summer of '68, a year before Bryan Adams picked up his first real 6-string) my mother would write a weekly letter to her parents and in-laws. The key subject matter of the emails was the goings on of her family, with a significant focus on her children - my brothers and me. These letters were retained by my grandmother and are now being organized and bound in a book/binder by my mother. What a cool thing to have. The only thing that I have that is remotely similar to this are the letters that I sent to family during the two years that I spent as a missionary. Those missionary letters, coupled with a journal that I kept fairly well during that time, are priceless and I am happy that I have, at least, some of that period of time documented for future prosperity to enjoy. The thought that someone in the future (most likely a child or grandchild of mine) will want to spend their time reading about my life leaves me feeling kind of arrogant - often times even I find the details of my daily life quite unenlightening. However, I am very grateful that a life sketch, or mini autobiography was put together on my grandfather's (dad's dad) life. It has allowed me to learn about him in a way that I was not able to before. By the time I came of age, my grandparents had either already pass away or were well into their twilight years. The pictures are almost as fun as the text.

The thing is we don't communicate in even remotely the same way that our parents did (my parents are 70+). Letters were much more common. Long-distance calling was very costly and communication via computers didn't exist, in fact, during the time frame during which my mother was writing her letters, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs hadn't even begun to conceptualize the personal computer. Letters leave a great trail, are easy to document and retain. What is a good equivalent to that now? Personal emails? Text messages? Twitter postings? Facebook postings? I really don't think that I want my Facebook history to be used as my personal life history. Cell phones, VoIP, Skype and other facetime gadgets eliminate historical costs of long-distance calling, so we do that a bunch more, leaving less reason to write letters or email that would contain family history type communication that is retainable.

Long story short, I think that regular postings to a blog, like this one, could be a good way to communicate the goings on in the Skidmore family and, if retained, could serve as a make-shift family history. Consequently, I am going to make it a goal to post something weekly and I will encourage my wife to do the same (her excuse for not posting is that she is not a good writer, well neither am I, as evidenced above, but I am not going to let that be a deterrent). I suspect that I will look back at these years of my life with a great deal of fondness. Our boys are Sam, Charlie and Isaac are 5, 3 and 1, respectively. They are so much fun and are still so innocent and sweet, eager to learn, fascinated by new things and want to spend time with their dad. I hope that never changes, but I am sure that it will; but when the day comes when they begin to ask what they were like as kids, I hope to have some good answers for them and some documentation to back it up.