Creating family memories takes time, involvement

One of the lasting joys of family life are happy memories. They weave themselves into our very souls. Time spent together with our families gives us a deep sense of belonging and the powerful security of being loved.

When I was a child my family spent a week each year in a remote cabin in Mt. Graham, Arizona. On those precious days my dad taught us to play “guinea peg,” a game of his youth where he whittled a peg from a stick. My mom played softball with us using sticks and pine cones. We picked raspberries and made jam with my cousin Terrell. At night my dad would show us tricks and riddles. This wonderful family cabin trip has continued for 45 years. At night in the cabin we still gather around a large table and play games and laugh until we cry. Belonging to a family is powerful.

Family traditions don’t need to cost a lot of money, but they do cost time and effort. One of the family traditions my siblings and I remember fondly was our weekly family night. My dad would disappear to his bedroom and prepare a short lesson. My mom would produce a special treat, usually a candy bar or M&Ms. Then we had a short activity, sometimes a rollicking version of hide-and-seek, sometimes we watched home movies. My dad bought a movie camera in the 1950s and had been taking movies ever since. At family night he set up the movie projector and one of us set up the big white movie screen. The movies were black and white and had no sound. We could hear the projector hum and buzz as we watched ourselves be a family, and we were the stars. Those nights together were simple and consistent, and have become epic family memories.

Another of our favorites was going to the park and having picnics with several families. In the quiet Arizona evenings, we played for hours at the large grassy park, and when it was time to eat we enjoyed cornflake chicken and homemade ice cream—strawberry and pineapple “tutti fruity.” My mom told me how her friend called one evening back in those days and said, “My daughter is driving me crazy to go to the park. Can you pack up your dinner and meet us there?” At the park, time stood still and life was simply perfect. Both we and our friends still talk about those fun picnics to this day.

My husband and I recently sold our old truck. It had a lot of miles, a leak and a new dent from a fallen tree. Our children were very sad about it. My husband was also puzzled about why his CDs were missing from the truck. Why did the kids care so much about our old truck, and where did the CDs go?

Here’s what we figured out: our truck represented our family’s epic memories. As we raised our kids, my husband took the whole family on his Alaskan adventures. We fished at every river available, we biked, hiked, and had cookouts. We went on outings several times a week all summer. As we drove, we listened to my husband’s collection of folk songs and the Bee Gees. We loved those songs, and we sang them over and over. Our daughters recently posted some of the words on Facebook:

“So here we are, in the Tijuana jail — ain’t got no friends to post our bail…;”

“Let me tell you the story of a man named Charlie on a tragic and fateful day…”

“TRAGEDY! When you lose control and you got no soul it’s TRAGEDY! …”

On our way home from adventures, the kids would wrap up in coats and blankets, snuggle into the back seat and sip on milkshakes, once again singing along to the folk songs.

One time we camped up the Deshka River several miles. We ran out of drinking water, built sand castles and fished. Early in the morning a zipper broke on one of our two tents and as the tent filled with a dense cloud of hungry mosquitoes, we all piled into the second tent. A couple of days later we saw grizzly tracks across our prior campsite location. We helped the kids catch silver after silver at Jim Creek, and who can ever forget the gorgeous views of the Knik Glacier and the smell of ripe salmon carcasses there?

We often biked with the kids on the Anchorage coastal trail along the ocean or up at Eklutna Lake along the lake trail. For many years one of us pushed a baby jogger and walked along with the slow little bikes and one of us rode ahead fast and far with the bigger kids. We cooked out in the mountains and hiked many trails together.

The truck took us to our good times as a family and we had so many of them. The truck had become a symbol of our family’s fun together — we shared a lot of love, a lot of laughs, a lot of milkshakes, and a lot of songs. And where did my husband’s CDs go? Well, the kids took the folk songs and loaded them onto our computer so we would have them forever.

“We build deep and loving family relationships by doing simple things together, like family dinner. In family relationships love is really spelled t-i-m-e, time. Taking time for each other is the key for harmony at home,” taught Dieter F. Uchtdorf, of the first presidency of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Whatever your family does together, keep doing it. Remember that your time and involvement are the key elements for creating lasting memories. If you spend time having fun as a family, you never know which traditions will become your family’s epic memories.

Beth Wright has lived in the valley since 1990. She is a mother and grandmother and volunteers for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.