The ten questions worth asking your grandmother — this Sunday

People put off recording their parents and grandparents for one reason more than any other: they don’t know what they’d ask. The moment feels like it needs an occasion, or training, or a plan. It doesn’t. It needs a Sunday afternoon, a phone set on the table between you, and ten good questions.

Here is what I’ve learned about asking, and the ten I would start with.

One technique before the questions

When someone gives you a general answer — “oh, it was a good childhood” — don’t move on. Ask one sensory question about the same thing: what did the kitchen smell like, who was sitting where, what were you wearing. Specific memories live behind the general ones, and one sensory detail almost always opens the story underneath. You only need to do this once or twice before it starts happening on its own. If you just keep going, it’s amazing what comes out of people.

And ask what and how, never why. “Why did you leave?” makes a person defend a decision; “How did you decide to leave?” invites them to remember making it. Same question, different door.

The ten questions

1. What’s the first thing you remember about your childhood home? Start here, not with dates and names. Memory opens through the senses, and everyone can walk through their first front door.

2. What did an ordinary Tuesday look like when you were ten? The ordinary days are the ones nobody thinks to tell — and the ones that vanish first. This question rescues them.

3. How did your parents meet — and what did they think of each other at first? You’re not just asking about them. You’re reaching one generation further back than you can reach anywhere else.

4. What did your mother’s kitchen smell like? Ask it exactly like that. Watch what happens.

5. How did you know Grandpa was the one? What almost kept it from happening? The second half is where the story lives. Every courtship has a near-miss, and nobody ever asks about it.

6. When did you first feel that God was real — and where were you standing? “Where were you standing” turns a testimony into a scene. You will remember her answer for the rest of your life.

7. What’s the hardest thing you ever carried — and what carried you? Ask gently, and then don’t fill the silence. The pause is part of the answer.

8. What do you wish you’d asked your grandmother? This one is for both of you. Whatever she says — that’s your next question, one generation too late, and the reason you’re sitting there with a phone on the table.

9. What should the grandchildren know about this family that nobody thinks to tell them? Every family carries instructions that were never written down. This is where they come out.

10. What are you not done with yet? End facing forward. She is not an archive; she’s a person mid-story. This question tells her you know that.

Permission, and one honest word

Skip half of these if the conversation goes somewhere better — the list is a door, not a script. Twenty minutes is enough. You can do it again next month.

And here’s the honest word: you don’t need UNA to do this. The Voice Memos app on the phone already in your pocket will hold her voice tonight. Do it with whatever you have — the recording matters more than where it lives. UNA exists because I believe these recordings deserve a home worthy of them: kept with the stories that explain them, safe for the grandchildren who’ll ask someday, never lost in a scroll of screenshots. It’s on the App Store now — and when its family rooms open, it will be a better home for her voice. But don’t wait for that. Don’t wait for anything.

If not now, when?