In early July, my friend Lexie gave birth to her second child. In the middle of the night. In the back seat of her Subaru Outback, which was parked outside a convenience store. With her husband Dave assisting and their two-year-old looking on.

Everything turned out fine, and by mid-August, Lexie had decided she wanted to write about her experience. Specifically, she wanted to write what is generally called a birth story. I had forgotten about birth stories, but I was plenty familiar with them back in the years when I too was busy giving birth. Some parents find it interesting, therapeutic, entertaining, cathartic, or all of the above to write down all the details that carried them from the first contractions (or splash of water on the floor) to the baby snuggled in their arms: the story of their baby’s birth.

So Lexie asked me if I could help her with some editing. But as with so many stories people describe to me, I couldn’t keep my hands off of this one. “I don’t want to just edit it; I want to turn it into an actual book!” I told her.
Because really, who says a memoir has to be about someone looking back on years or decades? Why couldn’t I write a memoir about the first ten minutes of someone’s life?

Of course, the book wasn’t really the baby’s memoir. It was the parents’ memoir, reflecting on the twenty-four hours or so between Lexie’s first indication that her water may have broken right up to the moment when the midwife, who arrived on the scene too late to do much in the way of actually birthing the baby, helped her upstairs to her own bed. And a little bit beyond, to how her two-year-old expressed his memories of the event a couple of weeks later.

We worked together on it. We told Lexie’s story. Then I interviewed her husband Dave and wrote up his part of it. I interviewed her doula, who had been instrumental in talking them through the process over the phone and then assisting at the scene moments after the baby’s arrival. Together, the three of them each told a branch of the story that then braided itself into a narrative – a narrative about one child’s arrival into this world.

I had never thought before about helping new parents to write birth stories, but no sooner were we done than I was asking Lexie and Dave, “Do you think other parents might want to do this too?” Because it turned out to be a lot of fun. And it also felt like a kind of cosmic counterbalance to the other interviewing and writing I’d been doing this month for projects with people in their eighties and nineties, people reflecting on decades of stories and experiences. Those books will be longer than Lexie’s. Hers is a tiny book, appropriate for containing the story of a tiny baby. But it’s a book nonetheless: a keepsake commemorating the remarkable circumstances that brought her baby into existence: who helped her along the way, how she overcame her fears, and even how her memories of her much-loved younger brother fortified her resolve (and gave us our title).

What I learned from this, besides how to give birth in the backseat of a car – a skill I sincerely hope never ever to draw upon, for a wide variety of reasons – was that stories are all around me: not just with the elderly people or business leaders or mission-driven philanthropists I so often join forces with on memoir projects, but with anyone who sees something that has just happened to them as remarkable. Moreover, Lexie had a great follow-up idea: for new parents who don’t see their birth story as quite substantial enough for a stand-alone book, how about if we compile some shorter accounts in a collection of birth stories?

A while ago, I spoke with a business leader who said her mantra in developing new ideas was “You’ve got to see it to be it.” I think what she meant by this is that you have to formulate a vision of what you want to do before you can achieve it. I would respectfully disagree with her. My mantra these days seems to be more like “You’ve got to do it to do it.” I never thought of writing birth stories as part of my professional repertoire…until someone asked me to. But come to think of it, that’s how I got started with standard memoirs as well: a high school friend asked me to help her mother with a memoir project.

And so a new idea was born along with a new baby. It inspires me to think that new ideas are everywhere if I just listen for them. In a way, that’s the best thing about my line of work. I don’t really have to be out there thinking things up and envisioning dreams. I don’t have to “see it to be it.” I just have to open my mind and my ears to the ideas that find their way to me.

(Lexie’s book is on Amazon – click here!)

The opportunity existed for us to leave town for the holiday weekend. I had confirmed weeks ago that no one would be using the family vacation home in Maine, and that we were welcome to spend the long weekend or any part of it there by the ocean. The idea seemed even more promising once a weather forecast was issued in the middle of last week: hot, sunny weather stretching from Friday through Monday and beyond. But the plan never quite materialized. Though I felt ready for a quick escape, Rick had been away for most of August and relished the thought of some time to attend to projects at home.

My Facebook feed was full of friends’ holiday weekend photos. Some were at lake homes or out on motor boats. Others were hiking in the White Mountains or catching enormous fish in rushing rivers.

But as I looked at my kids, who were doing none of the above but didn’t seem to have a complaint in the world, I remembered that if there’s one thing I’ve learned from my memoir work and helping people look back over lives that are often eight or nine decades long, it’s that the best memories often have nothing to do with being at the ocean for a holiday weekend. “My father lost his job during the Great Depression, and looking back as an adult, I know my parents must have been under a great deal of stress, but what I remember about that time is playing Parcheesi, popping popcorn, and listening to band concerts on the radio,” said one client recently.

And, of course, there’s always the possibility that what we would have remembered most from a Labor Day weekend getaway was the endless traffic jams that inevitably bookend a sunny New England weekend.

Instead, on Sunday evening, we bought tuna subs and went to a local pond not ten minutes from our house. It’s a place usually favored by families with very small children, because the water is warm and shallow, and we hadn’t been there in years, but somewhat to my surprise, the kids didn’t express the slightest hesitation about going. They put on their bathing suits and rummaged up beach towels. Once there, they made their way to the water’s edge together and started digging in the sand.

I can no longer tell myself that there will be lots of other Labor Day weekends for family trips to Maine or other long-weekend getaway destinations. Tim is starting his junior year; if all goes according to plan, two years from now he’ll already be away at college by Labor Day weekend. It’s quite possible, hard as it is to believe, that this was our second-to-last Labor Day spent together as a family, and our main activity was a picnic and swim at the local pond.

But it just didn’t seem to matter. I don’t know if my kids will ever write memoirs, but if they do, I’m almost sure they’ll remember digging in the sand and eating tuna subs ten minutes from home just as enthusiastically as they might have recalled a more grand-scale weekend getaway. They were happy and they were having fun. And what I’ve learned as I interview more and more people of all ages for memoir projects is that fun and happiness are what sow the seeds for long-lasting memories, regardless of their source.

All the other kids playing on the beach by the pond as the sun started to set appeared to be at least a half-decade younger than my children. Any other teens by the water that evening were there on dates, not with their parents and siblings. And Tim is surely the only kid in his peer group who would both chauffeur his family to the pond and build sand castles once he got there.

There will be other chances for family vacations and getaways. Sometimes the memories made close to home are the best ones of all.