Questions to ask your grandmother
Open with her kitchen, not her feelings. "What was on the table when you came home from school?" gets a real answer. "What was your childhood like?" gets "fine". The follow-up matters more than the question, which is how MemoriesBox asks its 380.
How to use this list
Do not read it out in order. Three or four questions is a session, and everything worth having is in the second column.
A follow-up is the question you ask into the answer you have just been given, instead of moving to the next item on your list. It is the whole difference between a questionnaire and a conversation. She says "we didn't have much, but we managed" — the list says ask about school next, and the story was one question further in: how did you manage? Ask that instead.
53% of Americans cannot name all four of their grandparents, and 51% say what they most want are stories about their ancestors when they were young (OnePoll for Ancestry, March 2022, n=2,113). Two generations is all it takes.
Two rules before you start. Ask about places and objects first, never about feelings. And leave silences alone — count to seven before you rescue her, because most people fill the gap themselves, and what they fill it with is better than your next question.
Start here
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| What was on the kitchen table when you came home from school? | Who put it there, and what were they doing while you ate? |
| What did the house smell like on a Sunday? | Whose job was that, and did anyone help? |
| Where did you sleep, and who else was in the room? | Who was up first in the morning? |
| What was on the walls? | Who chose it, and did anybody disagree about it? |
| What did you wear to school? | Who made it or mended it, and how long did it have to last? |
| Which shop did your mother send you to? | What were you allowed to buy on credit, and who settled it? |
The middle of the conversation
Her mother, and her mother's mother
Most families have almost nothing from this far back, and she is the last person who can supply it. This section is worth doing before anything else if she is frail.
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| What was your mother's name, and what did people actually call her? | What was her voice like? |
| What did your mother do all day? | Which part of it would you refuse to do now? |
| What did your grandmother look like? | What do you remember her hands doing? |
| Who was in charge of the money in that house? | What happened when there wasn't enough? |
| What did your mother never talk about? | Did you ever find out why? |
Being a girl there, then
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| What were you not allowed to do that your brothers were? | Did you do it anyway? |
| Who was your best friend at fourteen? | What happened to her? |
| Which of your friends did your parents not approve of? | What did they say about her? |
| What did you do on a Saturday night? | Who did you go with, and what time did you have to be back? |
| What were you told about how to behave? | Who told you, and did you believe it? |
Work, and money that was hers
Ask this properly. A great many grandmothers worked for decades and are almost never asked about it, because the family has filed them under kitchen.
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| What was the first job you were paid for? | What did the first wages go on? |
| What did you wear to work? | Who ironed it? |
| Who did you work with that you still think about? | What happened to her? |
| Did you have money that was yours, or was it all household money? | Where did you keep it? |
| What did you stop doing when you had children? | Did you want to go back? |
Love, and the years just after
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| Where were you standing when you first saw him? | What did you think was going to happen next? |
| Who else was interested in you? | What became of him? |
| What did your parents say about the marriage? | Were they right? |
| What did the wedding day actually involve — who did what? | Who did your hair? |
| What did you argue about in the first year? | How did those usually end? |
Children, and what nobody tells you
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| Where were you when the first one was born? | Who was with you, and who was not? |
| What did nobody warn you about? | Who did you talk to about it? |
| What did you cook when there was nothing? | Show me how much of each — with your hands is fine. |
| What did you do with a whole day at home with small children? | What was the worst hour of the day? |
Questions to save for later
These need a session or two behind them. You have earned them when she starts telling you things you did not ask for.
| Ask | Then ask |
|---|---|
| Was there something you wanted to do and never did? | What stopped it, and who knew about it? |
| Who in the family did people stop mentioning? | What were you told at the time? |
| Was there a year you would rather not talk about? | You do not have to say what happened. Which year was it? |
| What do you know about this family that nobody else knows? | Do you want it kept for after you are gone, or told now? |
| What do you think happens afterwards? | Has that changed as you have got older? |
The question that usually works when nothing else does
What was the first thing you bought with your own money?
It gets asked in the wrong way by everybody else — what was your first job, what did you earn — and those are dull. The thing she bought is not dull, because buying it was the first act of a person with her own money in a life where that was often not assumed.
It arrives with everything attached: the shop, the price, how long she saved, whether she told her mother, and whether the thing was any good. It is also safe. Nobody has to be brave to answer it, and modest women who insist they have done nothing worth recording will answer it without noticing that they have started.
If she says there's nothing to tell
Most grandmothers say it, and it is usually a verdict on the question rather than on her life. "Tell me about your childhood" has no answer. "What was in your mother's kitchen that you never see now" has one, immediately.
If she says it more than once, stop asking about her and start asking about the world she stood in: what things cost, what jobs existed, what you had to queue for, what you had to do that nobody has to do any more. She can answer those as a witness rather than a subject, and the personal detail comes in on its own about ten minutes later. The counter-move for each kind of deflection is on what to ask when they say there's nothing to tell.
Questions people ask
What's a good first question to ask my grandmother?
Ask about her kitchen or her bedroom. "What was on the kitchen table when you came home from school?" or "where did you sleep, and who else was in the room?" Both are answerable in one breath and both open onto her mother, the house, the money and the street.
How many questions should I ask my grandmother in one sitting?
Three or four, over about forty minutes. If you get through fifteen you were reading a list rather than listening. Stop while she is still enjoying it, and fix the next date before you leave.
What if she gets upset?
Stay, stop asking, and do not make a fuss of it. Most people cry for a minute and then carry on, and many say afterwards it was the part they were glad to have said. If she wants to stop, stop, and leave the recording as it is rather than deleting it that evening.
Should I record her, or just take notes?
Record. Notes keep the facts and lose the person, and it is her voice the family will want in twenty years — the way she says your name, the laugh, the phrase she always used. A phone on the table is enough to start.
Related: Questions to ask your grandfather · The first twenty minutes · Questions about leaving one country for another · Who agreed to be recorded · All the question pages
MemoriesBox asks the follow-ups for you, across many sessions, and keeps her own voice rather than a transcript — so the family can ask it a question later. Hosted in the EU. $139 a year, first 14 days free.