What to Ask Your Parents This Thanksgiving

Every family has its greatest hits. The time Dad drove the station wagon into the lake. The night Grandmom met Grandpop at a dance and told him she'd marry him. The blizzard, the underdone turkey, the cousin who showed up a day early.

You'll probably hear a few of them again this Thanksgiving. They're good stories. They're also, by now, polished smooth from retelling, and they tend to stand in place of everything else your parents have never quite gotten around to saying.

I have spent more than twenty years interviewing people about their lives. The stories that end up mattering most in a memoir are almost never the ones the family already knows. They come out when someone finally asks a better question, and then waits.

Thanksgiving is a good time to ask. Everyone is in one place, the afternoon is long, and there is usually a lull between the dishes and the pie. Here is how to use it.

Why "tell me about your childhood" doesn't work

Big questions get summaries. Ask your mother about her childhood and you will likely hear about where she grew up, how many siblings she had, and that it was "a different time." All true, and almost none of it a story.

Memory doesn't live in summaries. It lives in specific rooms, objects, smells, and people. Ask about the kitchen table in the house she grew up in, or the first car she ever drove, and you are suddenly somewhere particular. One detail calls up the next, and before long she is telling you something she hasn't thought about in fifty years.

Ask small and you'll get back large.

A few ground rules before you sit down

Ask ahead. Nobody likes an ambush over the sweet potatoes. A day or two before, try something like: "I'd love to hear more about when you first moved to Philadelphia. Could we sit together for a bit after dinner?" People who are invited to tell their stories tend to arrive ready to tell them.

Keep the audience small. At a full table, people perform. That's where the greatest hits come from. One or two listeners in a quieter room gets you something closer to the truth.

Record it, with permission. The voice memo app on your phone is enough. Set the phone flat on the table, away from the game on TV (Go Birds!), and explain what you have in mind: "I want to keep this for the next generation. I may even put it together in a book." Most people are flattered. Years from now, you will be very glad to have their voice and not just your notes.

Follow the story, not your list. The questions below are a way in. Once a real story starts, the best questions are the shortest ones: And then what? Who else was there? How did that feel?

Let the silence sit. When someone pauses, resist filling it. The pause is often where they decide whether to tell you the real version.

The questions

Start with places and things

These are the easiest questions to answer and the most reliable at opening a door.

• Describe the kitchen in the house where you grew up. Who was usually in it? What did you like to eat? What did you hate?
• What was the first car you ever drove, and where did you go in it? Were you always a good driver? Was Grandma?
• What did your street sound like on a summer night?
• Is there an object from your childhood you still think about? Where is it now?
• What did Thanksgiving look like when you were ten? Who sat where?

Ask about the people who came before

Your parents are the last people who knew your grandparents as young adults, and sometimes your great-grandparents at all.

• What do you remember about your grandparents? What did they call each other?
• What was your father like at work, as opposed to at home?
• Who in the family was a little bit of a mystery?
• Which of your parents' sayings do you still hear in your head?
• What do you know about how our family came to live here?

Ask about the turns in the road

Every life has a handful of moments when it could have gone another way. These are where the real story usually lives.

• What's a decision you made in your twenties that turned out to matter more than you knew?
• Was there a job, a city, or a person you almost chose instead?
• When was the hardest year of your life, and how did you get through it?
• What did you think your life would look like at fifty? How close did it come?
• When did you first feel like a grown-up?

Ask what they believe

Save these for later in the conversation, once the stories are flowing. They are the questions families most often wish they had asked.

• What did you learn the hard way that you hope we don't have to?
• What are you proudest of that nobody ever asks you about?
• Has anything you used to be sure about changed?
• What do you want your grandchildren to know about you?

And always end with this one

It's the question I end almost every memoir interview with. More often than you would think, the answer is the best story of the day.

What to do with the recording

Don't let it disappear into your phone. Before the weekend is over:

1. Label the file with the date and who was talking.
2. Save a copy somewhere other than your phone, and send one to a sibling.
3. Run it through a transcription app, or your phone's built-in transcript, so the words are searchable.
4. Write down the three stories that surprised you most, while they're fresh.

That last step matters. The surprises are your map for the next conversation, at Christmas or on a Sunday phone call.

When one conversation turns into something more

For many families, a recording and a few pages of notes are enough, and a real treasure on their own.

But sometimes one afternoon shows you how much is still there. You realize your father's life deserves more than a voice memo. Maybe you want someone with practice at this to ask the questions, someone who isn't also their child. Or maybe you'd simply like to hold the stories in your hands.

That is what a memoir is for. As I wrote in an earlier essay, the stories are the journey; the book is what comes home.