This post is adapted from The Washington Post by Bob Brody.

Back in January 2008, I started to keep a handwritten journal, one for our son, Michael, and the other for our daughter, Caroline. Every weekend, I jotted down a few hundred words based on a specific memory about our lives together and mine before they were born. What should I tell my children about the lives we’ve all lived? What do they need to know about me and themselves and our wider family? 

The journals would ultimately serve as a keepsake, an inheritance that could be read in decades to come.

I recounted, for example, how Michael, as a toddler seeking a sense of security, crept into our bedroom late every night to sleep on the carpet next to us. How Caroline cried her eyes out grieving over the loss of her pet goldfish with a burial ceremony at seaside. And how Michael later wrote a play produced at his college while Caroline trained as an opera singer.

I also chronicled episodes about my upbringing with parents who were profoundly deaf. I captured the excitement I felt as my grandfather took me to see Mickey Mantle play at Yankee Stadium; how extravagantly my grandmother doted on me; how poorly I behaved in school and performed academically until reaching college; and how a dumb, drunken remark late at night almost blew my first date with my future wife.

I gave each child a leather-bound volume as a surprise Christmas gift. I then did the same the next year.

“For parents, time can go by really fast,” says Shannon Bennett, a child and adolescent clinical psychologist at Weil Cornell Medicine. “So it’s important to document what you want to remember about family history and share it with your kids — and sooner rather than later.”

I urge people to preserve personal family history for the benefit of future generations. You can do so in writing or with video or audiotape. Oral storytelling often evaporates into the air without a trace, soon forgotten. Words on a page or images on film or your voice in a recording will more likely last, sending a message to the future.

My father never wrote anything about his family history, nor had my mother. And now both are gone and so much is forever lost. I vowed never to let that happen to our children. Unless we document our personal family history, it will go untold, possibly doomed to disappear.

What childhood stories do you want your kids to remember? What do you want them to know? Make an entry in your Qeepsake journal here or start a Qeepsake membership here.