The same way one tells a recipe, one tells a family history. Each one of us has our past locked inside.

I went to my grandmother, your great-great-grandmother, and asked her to write a letter. She was my mother's mother. Your father's mother's mother's mother. I hardly knew her. I didn't have any interest in knowing her. I have no need for the past, I thought, like a child. I did not consider that the past might have a need for me.
What kind of letter? my grandmother asked.
I told her to write whatever she wanted to write.
You want a letter from me? she asked.
I told her yes.
Oh, God bless you, she said.
The letter she gave me was sixty-seven pages long. It was the story of her life. She made my request into her own. Listen to me.

Everyone's past is locked up in their recipes - the past of an individual and the past of a nation as well.

Many of the folks here are active genealogy and family history buffs, and it's fun for us.

Before Grandma died, she talked about family history in a way she had never done before, ... She was interested in family history, especially African American women.

The contents of a house can trigger all sorts of revisions to family history.