Ask about a person

People often lead us to stories more naturally than dates do.

You might ask:

What was your mother like?

Who made you laugh when you were young?

Who were you closest to growing up?

Was there someone you admired?

Who did you get into trouble with?

Who do you still think about?

Then listen for the person behind the answer.

A grandmother may begin by telling you her father's name and end up describing the sound of his car arriving home from work.

That second part may be the story you didn't know existed.

Ask about a place

Places can hold remarkable amounts of memory.

Ask:

What was the house you grew up in like?

Where did everyone gather?

Where did you go when you wanted to be alone?

Was there somewhere you loved going as a child?

What did your neighbourhood feel like?

Then ask about the details.

What was outside the window?

Who lived next door?

What was always on the kitchen table?

Where did everyone sit?

Sometimes remembering the room helps someone remember what happened inside it.

Ask about an ordinary day

We often know the milestones of someone's life and very little about everything between them.

Try asking:

What happened on an ordinary school day?

What did you usually eat for breakfast?

What did you do after school?

What did weekends look like?

What chores did you have?

What happened in your house in the evenings?

These may sound like small questions.

But ordinary life is where much of a life was actually lived.

Ask about childhood

Instead of trying to document an entire childhood, choose something specific.

What games did you play?

What did you do during school holidays?

Were you ever frightened of anything?

What did you get in trouble for?

What did you want to be when you grew up?

What could you get away with that your parents never knew about?

Childhood stories often contain something particularly wonderful: a glimpse of the person you know before they became the person you knew.

Ask about the family they remember

Your grandparents may be able to take you one generation further than any conversation you've had before.

Ask:

What were your grandparents like?

Did you know them well?

Where did they live?

What do you remember doing with them?

Were there stories they used to tell?

What did your parents tell you about their own childhoods?

You may suddenly find yourself hearing about someone whose name you have seen on a family tree but whose personality you have never known.

A name can reach surprisingly far when someone still remembers the person attached to it.

Ask about work

A job title rarely tells the whole story.

Instead of asking only what someone did, ask what doing it was actually like.

How did you get your first job?

Do you remember your first day?

Who did you work with?

What were you good at?

Was there a job you hated?

Was there work you were particularly proud of?

What did you think you would do with your life when you were young?

The career recorded in a family history may be quite different from the working life someone remembers.

Ask about friendship

Friends can disappear surprisingly easily from family history.

Ask:

Who was your best friend?

How did you meet?

What did you do together?

Who made you laugh the most?

Did you ever get into trouble together?

Did you stay in touch?

A person may have been enormously important for twenty years and leave almost no trace in the records a family eventually inherits.

A story can give them a place again.

Ask about love

If it feels comfortable, ask about relationships too.

Not only:

How did you meet Grandma?

But:

What did you first notice about her?

Where did you go together?

When did you realize this was becoming serious?

What made you laugh together?

What do you remember about those early years?

The facts may tell you when two people married.

Their memories may tell you how they became them.

Ask about what changed

Some periods divide a life into before and after.

A move.

A new job.

A marriage.

A child.

A loss.

A war.

An illness.

Leaving home.

Starting again somewhere new.

You might ask:

Was there a time when your life changed more than you expected?

Then allow them to decide what that means.

You don't need to choose the important event for them.

What changed their life may not be the thing you expected.

Ask about family traditions

Traditions often carry stories quietly from one generation to another.

Ask:

What did your family always do at Christmas?

Was there something everyone ate on birthdays?

Did your family have sayings or expressions?

Were there things you did every summer?

Who cooked the meals everyone remembers?

Was there something your family always argued about?

You may discover that something your family still does began long before anyone remembers why.

That reason is worth keeping too.

Let photographs ask some of the questions

Bring out an old photograph.

Instead of immediately asking everyone to identify the people in it, try:

What do you remember when you look at this?

Then wait.

The photograph may lead somewhere completely unexpected.

A dress.

A car.

Someone standing at the edge.

A house in the background.

A person who isn't in the photograph at all.

Sometimes the photograph is simply the doorway.

Ask about things that have disappeared

Some memories belong to a world that no longer exists.

Ask:

What do you remember that has completely changed?

What used to be here that isn't anymore?

What did people do differently?

What did something cost?

How did you keep in touch with people?

What do you miss that younger people might never have experienced?

These answers preserve more than one person's life.

They preserve something of the world in which that life happened.

Ask what they were like at your age

This can change the conversation completely.

What were you like when you were my age?

Or:

What were you doing when you were twenty?

What did you worry about?

What did you think your life would become?

Did you feel as though you knew what you were doing?

It can be easy to know someone only as Grandma or Grandpa.

Questions like these remind us that they had an entire life before those names belonged to them.

Ask about things they are proud of

Not everything important comes with an award or a photograph.

Ask:

What are you proud of that people might not know about?

The answer may be an achievement.

But it might also be raising a family.

Helping someone.

Surviving a difficult period.

Building something.

Keeping a promise.

Starting again.

Let them decide what deserves to count.

Ask about something they learned

You don't have to ask someone to summarize the meaning of their entire life.

A smaller question can be gentler.

Is there something you understand now that you didn't when you were younger?

Or:

Did you ever change your mind about something important?

Was there something you had to learn the hard way?

Is there something you wish you had worried about less?

The answer doesn't need to become advice.

Sometimes it is simply another part of understanding who someone became.

Ask what nobody asks

There is one question I particularly like:

What do you remember that nobody ever asks you about?

Then give them time.

There may be a story they have carried for years simply because no conversation ever happened to reach it.

It may be important.

It may be funny.

It may be completely ordinary.

You don't have to know why it matters before you listen.

Don't ask every question

This may be the most important part of the guide.

You don't need to work through all of these questions.

Please don't.

Choose one.

Let the conversation wander.

If your grandfather spends forty minutes telling you about the bicycle he had when he was twelve, you haven't failed to reach the next question.

You found a story.

Stay there.

Listen for the next question

The best next question may not be written anywhere on this page.

It may be hidden inside the answer you just heard.

“We used to visit Aunt Rose every summer.”

Where did Aunt Rose live?

“Dad never came with us.”

Why not?

“There was an old boat behind the house.”

Whose boat was it?

And suddenly you are somewhere you could never have reached with a prepared list.

Good questions matter.

But listening is what tells you which question should come next.

Let some things remain private

A question is an invitation.

It isn't an obligation to answer.

There may be parts of someone's life they don't want to discuss.

There may be memories they aren't ready to revisit.

There may be stories that belong partly to other people.

That's okay.

You don't need every story in order to know someone better.

Their story still belongs to them.

One question is enough

You could print hundreds of questions.

You could plan a series of interviews.

You could try to record an entire life from beginning to end.

Or you could sit beside your grandmother and ask:

What was your mother like?

And listen.

Perhaps she will tell you something you already know.

Perhaps she'll tell you something you've heard a hundred times.

Or perhaps, somewhere in her answer, there will be a story you've never heard before.

When it appears, don't worry about the next question on the list.

Stay with the story.

You don't need a hundred questions. You need one that opens a story.