JUICE AND CRACKERS

10 January 2022

I stumbled across the web site for Storyworth some months ago....maybe a year or so ago.  It's an interesting way for people to write their stories for their families.  Once a week you choose a question and you answer them and send to Story worth.  Questions like "what things you cannot live without," "If you were to do it over, what would you do differently?" "Do you have any regrets in life," etc.  I was interested in the questions, thinking they might be good subjects to write about on Funny the World, but I didn't pursue it any further.

You pay for a year and at the end of the year, Storyworth takes all of the questions you have answered, with photos, if you include them, and sends you a hard back book.

Char had started writing her memoirs when she discovered Storyworth and the web site gave her encouragement to get serious about writing her life story.  The book came out recently and she sent me a copy.

It's a wonderful high quality hard back book.  Her story comes to about 300 pages and has lots of photos (the only complaint I have ... and she too ... is that the photos aren't bigger).

She's a great writer and her story is captivating.  I started reading the book yesterday and read it until dinnertime and then finished it this morning.  She starts with her parents and their parents, which is great to have in print since it is so complicated and in the 60 years of our friendship, I've never completely figured out who is who

Who lived with whom and the families that shared houses and apartments during the war.  Keeping track of the schools she attended, depending on who they were living with, and gradually getting her to high school, where her schooling began to get more normal was fun to follow...and how she made friends with Concetta, one of the Pinata people.

I met her in 1961 at the Newman Center in Berkeley and we have been friends ever since, so her story from 1961 forward is a lot about our two families and our children, who grew up together as siblings (Jenny and Jeri, 6 weeks apart in age at left).

Her stories of the crazy things we did during our kids' younger ages, when we lived near each other, were like reading my own diary.  Such fun to see it remembered in this book.

The stories of her trips around the world would make a fascinating book all by themselves.  She has traveled everywhere, from major European cities to Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky in Russia.  She and husband Mike traveled together and they traveled with other people, often Walt and me.  Her story of Mike's medical problems on their last cruise in Germany and his death in Magdeberg had me in tears.

She talks a lot about the Pinata people, our activities through the years, and the deaths in the group -- three kids and five adults, so far.  It is like reading my family story.  I couldn't write a book like this -- my life hasn't been nearly as interesting.

I am so pleased to have this book and hope that some day one or more of my kids will want to read it, since much of it is their story too.  What a tremendous gift she has given to her children, her grandchildren, and to future generations.