Like Pulling Teeth

My mom and I were driving back home from Twin Falls after going through the Temple before its dedication. We were talking about many things as my sister snoozed in the back seat. As we were talking I expressed to my mother that I wish she had kept a journal when she was younger. I have kept a journal since I was eight and I know the value and importance it is to posterity and even for yourself. My mother, as wonderful as she is, is not the best at recording things. My baby book has one page filled out: my length and weight and when I was born and who helped deliver me; things like that. She has several journals that she keeps tucked away in several places around the house. They are completely empty or barely written in.
I really gained an appreciation for how important keeping a journal is several years ago when I was turned on to a book by my brother Erick. He read a couple chapters of it out loud to my mom and I on another road trip way back when...so long ago I can't remember where we were going, or perhaps coming, from. The book was titled "Thoughts of a Grasshopper" by Louise Plummer. I was so intrigued by its witty, self conscious contents that I sought out a copy of my own and began to devour it. It is a short book, and definitely worth the read to any who need a little inspiration on journal writing. Lol, highly recommended to all your relatives you wish would record their life story.
Though I seem to have lost my copy, the ideas still remain...that in keeping a journal we incapsulate not only the history of the world around us but the goings on of our everyday lives: the threads and tangents and interconnected thoughts and events that slowly mold our psyche and being over a lifetime. I expressed that night, to my mother, the desire I had to know who she is on a very personal level; a level that you can only reach by wrenching out the guts of your soul and putting them in some semblance of form and organization on a blank page. It is art; Beauty and Ugliness all rolled into one. You get the good with the bad...unless you are filtering (addressed in Thoughts of a Grasshopper).
My mother agreed that she needed to be better but that she would excel more if she were to keep a journal on the computer. My recommendation was that she start a blog and explained to her how easy it was to start one (I, coincidentally, did not have one at the time). We came up with a great name for her blog and she has since been unsuccessful in starting it up. I will continue to prod until she is an avid blogger. I'm sure she has a lot to say, and I for one, would like to hear it.