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"Gosh, I love it when I&amp;#039;m right! One of the things I love most is teaching people how easy and fun writing a family history can be. In fact, I&amp;#039;ll be in Burbank in June at the Southern California Genealogical Society&amp;#039;s Family History Writers Conference doing just that. One of the first things I assure folks is our stories are embedded within us, and we have easy access every day. Family stories are our points of reference in every situation. Our minds are always going home. We see a hat worn by a man on an old movie channel and our mind jumps to our grandfather; his cigars, his chair, his Scottie dog on his lap. We roll our cart by the butcher case at the grocery store and a passing glimpse of stew beef transports us momentarily to our mother&amp;#039;s kitchen, reaching for her blue\u2013speckled roasting pan, the one with the lid. We remember which cupboard she kept it in, and how she would always soak it in the sink overnight to clean it. So, VOILA! Guess what I found? I was sitting in the sea of objects that has taken over my living room, when I unearthed from one of the boxes my mother&amp;#039;s blue\u2013speckled roasting pan. This made me so happy. This pan is in my pantheon of memory icons; made legendary to me through all these years of talking about it. And the memories rose again within me. Not Mom crippled in bed, but Mom talking, standing, laughing in her kitchen. Thank you, blue\u2013speckled pan. Writing family history really is easy and fun. D.G. Fulford is the author of Designated Daughter: The Bonus Years with Mom, written with her mother Phyllis Greene. She is also the co-founder of TheRememberingSite.org. You can find her at DGFulford.com. Photo credit: Marcia Smilack "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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