I was looking for a hook to get me back into creating tools to help with creating legacy works. The month of August provided the necessary nudge.
August is a period of time that brings back fond memories, the flavors of summer, the sounds of my brothers’ laughing in the back yard at our August birthday gathering. Three of my four brothers were born in August.
Me, being the youngest kid by a large margin, I was almost ten years younger than the next youngest sibling, I was focused on desert at these gatherings. Three cakes! Each person with an August birthday could choose their favorite birthday cake and Mom would make it.
Jim wanted strawberry short cake. Warm Bisquick short bread, smothered with cold, juicy straw berries, and topped with heavy cream. Yum!
Max requested German Chocolate layer cake with coconut pecan icing. Delightful. And with a glass of milk, yum!
Roger (Trigger warning -this link is about Vietnam)was a chocoholic and had a real sweet tooth. His favorite cake was the most decadent cake I ever had until I was well into my adult years, and was served an even more decadent Lava Cake at an upscale restaurant was just a version of what Mom called Chocolate Upside-Down cake.
August was family and food, but it also had thunderstorms. As a kid I loved storms. I remember leaning on my second floor bedroom window sill with the little sliding screen fitted into the window I had just pushed up to accommodate the adjustable-width screen. The gusts of wind on top of a breeze cooled the muggy air. The churning blue black clouds rolled in from the west illuminated with flashes of lightening and carrying the scent of ozone and rain. The first huge drops of rain would hit the window and I felt like the world was glowing with portent. Storms provided one of the few unpredictable elements in my life. I loved them. Life on the farm was the same old samething day-in and day-out. Storms were the exception.
August was also when my brother Max got married. That same August day was when my brother was nearly killed in Vietnam when a mortar hit and exploded just behind him as he was lifting another Marine into a Med-evac helicopter.
The school year usually began about three weeks into August. So shopping for school clothes was an August highlight.
I was cruising down memory lane remembering these things when I realized that month-focused writing prompts probably would get at information in ways that other prompts did not. The more I thought about it, the more I felt this was a good elicitation tool. So I began to create it. The image below is a promo for the Monthly Memories Worksheet that was the give away with this month’s newsletter.
Do not pout. I’m making this available to you too. Just click HERE. But it is only working as a print and fill out type download — my smart fillable PDF isn’t working.