The annual Day of Listening - an alternative to Black Friday

Unless you’re living under a rock (in which case, you probably aren’t reading this) there’s no escaping the fact that this is Black Friday. We're all supposed to rouse ourselves from our turkey-induced stupor and head to the malls to spend every dollar we don’t have on holiday gifts we can’t afford for people who don’t really need anything. It's the American way.

Here’s an alternative. Last year, a nonprofit outfit called StoryCorps launched an annual Day of Listening the day after Thanksgiving to encourage Americans “to record and share conversations with loved ones and neighbors,” according to the group’s web site.

The Day of Listening wasn't around yet when I sat down and interviewed my mother, Rita Carrier, several times over a period of years. (She's in her late teens in the photo.) The whole thing was very informal - just my wife and I, my mother and an inexpensive tape recorder. We did the same thing with my father, Leonide Carrier, and my mother-in-law, Georgiana Soares, both of whom have since passed on.

Sometimes we came prepared with written questions that my brother or I cooked up. Usually, we just winged it. Later, I transcribed the conversations and arranged mom's recollections in chronological order.

My mother is 90 years old now and living in a nursing home. She can’t communicate very well anymore, so the window of opportunity for meaningful conversations has come and gone. But we have an invaluable record of her reminiscences.

Flipping through it as I write this, I'm reminded that her father’s first car was a Model T Ford, the receipt for which turned up in his safe after he died in 1986. He paid $50 for that car.

I'm reminded that so many of my mother’s classmates dropped out of Notre Dame High School in Southbridge, Mass., to go to work that she was one of only three students - all girls - in her 1938 graduating class.

I'm reminded that my father gave mom driving lessons in 1954 when she was pregnant with my younger brother David, and she almost drove into a tree. She simply refused to get behind the wheel after that, and never did get her license, even though she worked outside the home until she was in her 80s.

And the list goes on. Everyone’s family is chock full of stories waiting to be told, if someone just takes the time to listen. Isn’t that a lot more rewarding than fighting discount-crazy Black Friday crowds to save five bucks on a tacky sweater that Uncle Ralph will never wear?