How to ask a parent about their life

Most of us mean to ask. We think about it at holidays, or after a birthday that lands heavier than the last one. Then the moment passes, and the asking waits for another year.

Part of what makes it hard is that the obvious questions are the least useful ones. "Tell me about your childhood" is a request for a summary, and summaries are what people give when they don't know where to begin.

Start smaller than you think

Specific questions are easier to answer than big ones. Instead of asking about someone's whole childhood, try:

• What did the kitchen smell like on a Sunday?
• Who was the first person you told when something good happened?
• What did you own that you were proud of?

A person who freezes at "tell me your life story" will often talk for twenty minutes about a bicycle.

Let the silence sit

The instinct, when someone pauses, is to fill the gap with another question. Try not to. Most of the good material arrives a few seconds after the point where the conversation feels finished.

Ask about the ordinary

We tend to ask about the milestones — the wedding, the move, the war. Those stories are usually well-rehearsed, and the rehearsal has worn the detail off them.

The unrehearsed ones are better. What a Tuesday looked like. What they worried about at thirty. What they thought their life was going to be, before it became what it is.

It doesn't have to be one conversation

The idea of sitting someone down for a formal interview is enough to stop most families from starting at all. It doesn't work that way in practice. A story here, an afternoon there, and over a year you have something none of you could have produced in a single sitting.

The only real mistake is waiting for the right time to do it properly.