A Legacy

My mum loved people and their stories. Sometimes they were just the tales she passed on to us from new people she'd just met, or updates about the lives of friends or family she'd bumped into. One of my school friends talked about her 'database' of information about me and my friends. She was better at remembering the people whose paths I had crossed than I was. 'Remember so-and-so, you were at primary school with?' would more often than not be met with blank incomprehension as I struggled to remember the person whose mother she had met on the bus or in the supermarket.
And the historian in her delighted in exploring her own family tree, long before it became the stuff of celebrity TV programmes. Tracing family ancestors across Yorkshire and making connections with a worldwide diaspora.
That was the same historian who found her ideal job, telling stories of old Dundee to schoolchildren from across the city. Either in person when classes came to the museum, or on school visits when she went out to talk to them, or through the various publications she produced over the years, some of which I've gathered here. She also passed on her knowledge to adult groups, and a couple of years ago worked with my father and another person to produce a book about Broughty Ferry to commemorate the centenary of its amalgamation into Dundee.
She was at the heart of our family, keeping up connections with relatives in Yorkshire and elsewhere, always remembering birthdays and anniversaries and frequently marking them with another of her carefully crafted home-made cards. That is probably a subject for another blip.
More connections.
More stories.