Hi!
I'm so glad you landed here, and I'm sure you have questions.
The one I get asked most often is, "How do you come up with all this stuff?" followed closely by " How do you remember all that?"
I grew up the youngest of eleven children in a farming community in SE Michigan. My parents and siblings are or were all disgustingly brilliant and resourceful. Necessity helped. I became an artist and writer.
Here's how:
Storytelling was just something we did in those days before cell phones, internet, or most of the technology that lures people away from real face-to-face life. The pace was slower and opportunities to enjoy the quiet of nature were abundant.
This formed the foundation for the stories I began writing down over the past three decades when I realized our family was expanding beyond my reach while some were leaving Earth, their stories in danger of being lost to us forever.
I decided to start with my own childhood memories.
Perhaps the best way for you to get to know me is for me to share the Prologue from my growing collection of stories titled, "Memoirs Of A Lastling." So here goes...
Excerpt: Prologue from Memoirs of a lastling, by Jan Dale ©2026 All rights reserved
Prologue:
As you read these snippets of time, you may wonder if it all happened just this way. I applied my inherited penchant for story-telling generously in the re-creation of events. That is not to imply that these things did not take place. Indeed they did, every last one. But the vast majority of minutes and hours which cradled them were,..well,..boring. After all, real life is composed primarily of the mundane. I chose to tell only those parts worthy of a good spin.
Just as I omitted the repetitious stuff of everyday life, I also omitted any events that could potentially cause emotional injury to any of the principal characters. These were real people with real feelings to be respected. Aside from the humorous growing pains we all went through, you won’t find any seriously dirty laundry here.
Nor is my goal to over-idealize my childhood. I’ve simply adopted a doctor’s pledge to “…first, do no harm.”
Some who know my family may recognize the people and events contained herein and take occasion to minor differences between their memory of events and mine.
These stories are of MY memories and are written to give my family a glimpse into our mutual heritage and preserve it for others who might find in it an adopted kinship.
Therefore, I interlace the best of the truth with other truths that may not have happened at the same precise moment in time. Each time I’ve shared one of these stories, one family member or another inevitably contributes a little more insight, so I do occasionally revise, or add a footnote.
As I recount the antics and emotions described herein, I must remind myself and you the reader of another writing, very old and very wise;
“When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child: but when I became a man (adult), I put the ways of childhood behind me.”
The Bible, I Corinthians 13:11
That said, some negative motivations and behaviors, like revenge and deceit, are described in a humorous way. My purpose is not to endorse or gloss over these, but so the reader may recognize in me their own childhood emotions and turn as I did to our mutual Creator who promises to forgive all sins, however great or small we tend to think of them, if only we will ask.
My desire is that as the family continues to branch out, these stories will be read and passed along word-of-mouth so that through my eyes, those not yet born will smell the hay of the neighbor’s barn, see Great Grandma’s twitching mouth, hear Great Grandpa’s resonant voice…and love their past as I loved mine. My name will be on it boldly so that maybe, just maybe, they may remember me too.
Enjoy!
Jan