When the annual A to Z Challenge begins on April 1, 2024, Molly’s Canopy will participate for the sixth time in the month-long blogging marathon. My theme this year is My Life: The Prequel (in Snapshots) — adding a bit of my parents’ stories to the family history mix.
Background
In 2017, I blogged about Whispering Chimneys: My Altamont Childhood, where my genealogy journey began in the early 1950s.
In 2020, I returned to my childhood in Endwell: My Elementary Years to explore how my interest in family, ancestors, and heritage germinated once my family moved to the suburbs around 1957.
In 2021, I revisited my early adolescence in Endwell: My Early Teen Years as I came of age in the early 1960s – amid rock concerts, world events, and memorable visits to family.
Last year, I wrapped it all up with Endwell: My High School Years during the rebellious Sixties, which engendered a new, activist outlook that would carry me into young adulthood.
My life: the prequel
So enough about me. Now it’s time for the prequel. What led up to my arrival on the scene? Who is ultimately responsible for me even being here? And who encouraged my interest in genealogy, inspiring me to continue tapping away on family history stories?
Who else but my parents, Norm and Peg (Laurence) Charboneau — intrepid partners on many genealogy road trips, guardians of the family archive, and the stars of this prequel!
• My inspiration: Genealogy bloggers who wrote about their immediate families during previous challenges.
• The rationale: We spend so much time searching for our distant ancestors and telling their stories that we forget to write about more recent generations. As family historians we owe it to posterity to include ourselves and our closest relatives in the mix.
• The impetus: Not getting any younger, so there is no time to waste in getting these stories out there.
Leaving a historical record
Have you ever wished your ancestors had left letters, a diary, or some other tangible record for posterity? I know I have, and in this year’s prequel I’ll use snapshots — the modern mode of record keeping — to capture key moments in my parents’ early lives.
My plan is to blog about my mom and dad’s respective childhoods in the upstate New York communities where they grew up and went to college, then their early work years before marriage. Along the way, my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other relatives will show up to take a bow.
The stage is set
• Time & Place: The 1924-1950 in upstate New York and New Jersey.
• Backdrop: My parents’ childhoods and teens, their college years, my dad’s WWII service — then how they met, courted, got their first jobs, and got married.
• The Cast: My parents, their immediate and extended families; their neighborhood, college and work friends; and eventually me, the first of their five children.
Please take a seat and get comfortable. On April 1 the curtain rises on My Life: The Prequel (in Snapshots). See you then!
© 2024 Molly Charboneau. All rights reserved.