About Dad

On the simplest level I thought creating my Dad's LifeMap as a Father's Day gift would be a nice, easy and free thing to do. Between my work schedule and his retirement schedule (read: time down on the Cape), we don't spend all that much time together. Creating his LifeMap -- a dynamic feature for recording your life story on Eons -- would give us time to sit together and simply talk; and I knew that our time together would be all he really wanted as a gift.

Another, more-obvious benefit to this project is that we'll have his life and memories recorded. My Dad's been through a lot -- over the years we had heard the stories of growing up in poverty during wartime in Greece -- but the stories lived only in our minds. And as we all know, memories can be forgotten, or our mind can play tricks on us and we can create fake memories from bits of stories we have pieced together.

The final reason I wanted to do this is that people are always urging my Dad to write his life story. As I am a writer, I wanted to help my Dad do it, and saw this as a great way to start. So on his 77th birthday, I showed up early to his birthday lunch with my laptop and we got started.

In a nutshell, the project wasn't hard, but it took longer than I expected to get all the info I needed to make a good LifeMap. It took about 3 - 4 hours of interviewing and note taking -- done over two afternoons, -- and about 2 hours of organizing the events and milestones into Lifebits. ...And then there is the time we spent looking through photos.

During the interviewing process I gained insight into my Dad the Person rather than just Dad the Patriarch. I heard stories I had heard a million times before. I heard things I thought I knew, but had skewed in my memory. Then there was all the stuff I was finding out for the first time.

I found out that I had the story of my parents first date -- one of my most favorite stories about them, that I tell often -- all mixed up. In my mind, they had met at a Valentine's Day dance, went to a diner afterwards where my dad bought my mom a Hershey bar so she'd have chocolate on Valentine's Day. That Hershey bar has become a tradition for them. My own ritual in this is asking my Dad every Valentine's Day if he remembered to give Mom her Hershey bar. However, I had the story wrong all my life! The Hershey bar date wasn't the night they met. They met in November of 1964 at a dance but didn't actually go on a date until February of 1965. I was way off, and I never had a clue.

We also created new memories during this process. As we were looking through photos to post, I noticed that all the photos of my dad from his army days, someone had written sappy things like "I love you!" "My angel!" "Cute!" on the borders of the photos. I had pointed these out to my mom assuming that she was the one who did this, but lo and behold, she had never even noticed it before. My Dad claimed ignorance when we showed him! Now we have something new to tease my Dad about. (I wonder whether we'll ever solve this "mystery".)

And then there were the things I gleaned from our conversations, hints of his life and personality from when he was young, that kept making me think, "Hmm...that sounds like something John (my husband) would do." Much to the chagrin of the rebellious teenager that still dwells inside me, I realized that I did indeed end up marrying my father.

Looking through the photos was an amazing experience. Its one thing to hear the stories; but it's a whole other thing to bring them to life with images. It was also sweet to show the pictures to the grandchildren and watch their reactions. When they looked at photos of my dad as a young man, they could still tell it was their Papou.

I knew the process would be emotional as I pieced the puzzle of his life together, from poverty to success, for the LifeMap, but I wasn't prepared for just how much it would move me. This morning at work I was asking my colleagues for some guidance as to how to write the Lifebits since I was doing it for someone else (first person versus third person -- we agreed on first person). I told them about this one particular Lifebit from 1944, when at the age of 14 my father finally had enough money to get his first pair of shoes. I started to cry as I told the story.

As I started to put all my notes in chronological order -- and see the progression of my Dad's life with all that he's accomplished -- I was overcome with awe. I'm amazed at what he's been through and I'm astounded by how far he's come. What has touched me as well is realizing that my Dad is one of millions who have done the same. Now that's very real to me. Every time I see Greek immigrants who are around my Dad's age, I'm struck that they too have most likely overcome similar obstacles in their lives.

I am so looking forward to showing Dad his LifeMap on Father's Day. This project has been as much a gift for me as it is for my Dad. I am so proud of him and all of my aunts and uncles -- they've survived hardships I will never know. I am incredibly grateful for the life my parents have given me. And now, more than ever before, I am inspired to live a purposeful life.

And in building his LifeMap, I realized that we had just skimmed the surface of Dad's life. There's so much more to be told. This undertaking has become a wonderful start to an ongoing, richly satisfying conversation between my Dad and me.

The LifeMap is a great place to start capturing and recording the lives and memories of those you love.

Related Links

Explore BigPapou's LifeMap.

Discover how to build a LifeMap.