My Mother’s Stories is a category composed of short excerpts of a longer memoir, We Were Not Spoiled, written by me, Denis Ledoux, as told to me by my mother, Lucille Verreault Ledoux.

We two began collaborating in 2008 when my mother was still in her apartment which was about 60 miles away in Biddeford, Maine, from where I live in Lisbon Falls. On visits to her, I introduced the subject of collecting her memories into a memoir.

Creating certainty

At first, she commented, “Who will want to read my stories? What’s the point of writing them?”

“Well, right away, I can point to your family. We are interested in knowing more about you.”

She was not convinced.

Priming the pump of memory

To get the pump of memory for my mother’s stories going, I primed it by writing the stories I already knew. On a next visit, I would read these to her, and she corrected me on this or that point in my account. In that way, she got used to the idea of seeing her stories written and hearing them spoken to her.

Then, later, she began to contribute actively to the stories by thinking about them in between times, and when I visited, she would share a new story. As my mother’s stories added up, I would ask her for linking (or transition) details.

In this way, my mother’s stories came to be.

A Representative Franco-American woman

One of my goals was to write a story of a Franco “every woman” of the first half of the twentieth century.

Eventually my mother went into an assisted living facility. I was then that we finished collecting the stories.

After these stories of Franco-American life were published as a memoir, We Were Not Spoiled, in late 2013, she would sell books to visitors. Periodically, she would call me to say she needed more books.