This can be a great homeschool writing activity! Invite your older children to participate. As vivid as the moment seems at the time, memories fade. It’s good to write down our recollections. Other childhood memories recall the mysteries of new baby brothers coming on the scene, building a hideout among the branches of a fallen tree, and giving my best friend’s parakeet a ride down the stairs in her aqua Barbie convertible.

In my mind’s eye, I can still picture driving from Illinois to Wisconsin beneath a canopy of crimson leaves against an blindingly blue sky. I remember Passover dinners with a million Jewish relatives in the basement of some wizened old uncle’s apartment building. Those childhood m emories of my grandma are largely synonymous with food. Together Grandma and I would walk to the corner of Roscoe and Broadway, where we’d explore the wonders of Simon’s Drugstore, Heinemann’s Bakery, and Martha’s Candies. This was the 1960s, long before big-box stores came on the scene. Her well-stocked pantry and doily-covered tabletops contained loads of delectable treats I was often denied at home: pastries, chocolate-covered marshmallow cookies, and delicate bowls of jellied orange sticks and other candy.

I can picture myself reaching way down into Grandma’s frost-filled chest freezer for the ever-present box of Eskimo Pies. My brother and I would sleep in the small bedroom off the kitchen-the very room our mom shared with her own brother growing up in the north side of Chicago. Every door in the house was fitted with wobbly crystal doorknobs. Her desk drawers, lined in green felt, spilled over with card decks, cocktail napkins, and golf tees.

I loved visiting my grandma’s apartment, with its fringed window shades and faint smell of eucalyptus. My childhood memories are rich and varied.

Memorial place to write memories