Creating a personal time line is an excellent way to jog your memory and record the events and trends in your life. A detailed time line can provide inspiration for hundreds of stories.

To create a personal time line:

Use one sheet of paper for each 10 years of your life.
Turn your page width-wise:

On the first page:

• Write your full name and date of birth on the top left side.
• Directly under your name, write your father's full name and age at the time of your birth.
• On the next line, write your mother's full name (including her maiden name) and age at the time of your birth.
• On lines under your parent's name, write the full names and ages of siblings living at the time of your birth. (Do not include siblings born after you. Their births will be placed on the time line.)
• On the top right side of the page write: "The First 10 Years."
• Skip about 2 inches and draw a horizontal line across the page. Place "tick" marks every inch across the line. This indicates each year. At year 0, write in your birth date. On subsequent years, write the year. At each tick mark, indicate your age that year. For example:

• Above your time line, jot in historical events.
• Below the line, write in 2-3 word titles of events that happened to you or your family during these years. Joyce Delbridge says, "Don't worry about filling up the spaces. Leave room for memories to emerge as you open up your memory to those days."

On subsequent pages:

• Write your name and date of birth on the top left side.
• Write "The ___ 10 years" on the right.
• Skip about 2 inches and continue with your horizontal line as on the previous page.

Don't forget to insert births of siblings, vacations, boy/girl friends, jobs you had, names of teachers, schools and churches you attended, and illnesses.

More ideas for time lines:

• Make a "spiritual time line" which includes only notations about where you were spiritually at different times in your life. Later, you can explore memoirs of those times and think about what made these spiritual events come to pass.
• Create a miniature version of a personal time line. Fold it into an accordion book which can be inserted into a memoir. Or, print the time line on cardstock, fold it into an accordion and display it.
• Help your parents or other older relatives make a time line of their lives.
• For the special birthday party of an elderly relative, display a formal time line of their life. Use colored butcher paper. Allow about 1½ inches per year. Write up vignettes on contrasting colored paper and paste at the appropriate place. Include photographs and documents like birth certificates, marriage licenses, etc. Be sure to include historical events at the top. These events shaped their lives in many ways. For example, when I made my mother's time line, I was amazed to see how long the Great Depression lasted during her life.
• If you are having a family reunion, make a giant time line on butcher paper to hang up. Go back as far as you think people can remember. Allow about 3-5 inches per year. Encourage family members to write events directly on the time line or supply a stack of Post-it^® Notes. Later, you can transcribe it to a smaller version to send out to members and/or display at the next reunion. Hint: Tell people ahead of time that the time line will be displayed so they can begin thinking about events to write in. They may need to look up some dates before arriving at the reunion.
• Family time lines can also be published in family newsletters or on a family page on the World Wide Web.

Timetables of American History, by Laurence Urdang, Editor

Timetables of History, by Bernard Grun

Timelines of the 20^th Century, by David Brownstone and Irene Franck (These authors have also written Timelines of War and other similar reference books.)

At her 80th birthday celebration, Mary Rhoades talks about an event which is depicted on a 10 foot time line of her life.