A 70th birthday
A 70th birthday gift with seventy years in it
Seventy is the birthday where the party is still about the future and the stories are still sharp. People turning seventy have time, opinions, and a memory that nobody has ever asked for in full. It is the easiest of the big birthdays to give this on, and the one where the book comes out the longest.
What you give
A listener, a message from you, and in time a book.
A voice message from you, thirty seconds, that opens the gift. Then, if there are siblings and grandchildren, one from each of them if you like. The teller hears all of them at the first visit.
A first visit of fifteen to twenty minutes by voice, then two or three a week for as long as they want, with a thirty-second question on the days between.
A book that forms as they go. At seventy there is often enough for a full memoir, in chapters, in their own words, with the family reading along as it grows.
How to give it
4 steps. You do the first one.
Buy it once, in the weeks before the party. One payment, no subscription, and the teller owns every recording.
Record your message, and ask siblings and grandchildren to record one each. Say what you want and why seventy.
"Happy seventieth, Mum. We'd love to have your stories, all of them, and we've decided this is the year we stop saying we'll get round to it."
Give it at the party, after the cake, when they are already in a telling mood. Read one question out loud.
Agree a loose rhythm with them. Sunday after lunch is the usual. Then leave it alone and read the chapters when they arrive.
Questions to start with
Ask one. Then follow it.
Written for the person telling the story. The full list is at questions to ask your parents about their lives.
- What did the world look like from your front step when you were seven?
- What did you do at seventeen that your parents never found out about?
- What was the best decision you made in your twenties, and did it feel like one at the time?
- Which job did you leave, and what did you say on the last day?
- What did your forties cost you, and what did they give you?
- Who were the three people at your fortieth birthday who are not at this one, and what should we know about them?
- What do you do now that you were never allowed to do?
- What are you planning for seventy to eighty?
If they are not sure
It is theirs to accept, or leave.
A seventy-year-old who says "I'm not old enough for this" is right, and that is the point: this is not a last-chapter exercise, it is a long interview with someone who has plenty of life left. Say so. Suggest they start with the funny stories and see if it takes. If it does not, the gift keeps, and the recordings they do make are theirs.
Tellforth
The best gift is being asked.
Everything else is a way of saying so.
Updated · Plain-text version of this page: /occasions/70th-birthday.md