Question pack
Questions to Ask Your Mother About Her Life
Interview questions for your mother's whole life: the girl she was before you, falling in love, the years raising kids, and what she knows now.
You know your mother as a mother. That's the problem. There were decades of her life before you showed up, and she rarely gets asked about them. Most conversations run on the family's current business: who's visiting, what the doctor said, what's for dinner.
These questions go after the rest of her. They're deliberately specific (a first paycheck, a Friday night, a kitchen table) because specific questions pull up real scenes, and "tell me about your life" pulls up a shrug.
Before she was your mother
- What did your bedroom look like when you were sixteen?
- What was your first paying job, and what did you spend the first paycheck on?
- Who taught you to cook, and what was the first thing you made on your own?
- What did you and your friends do on a Friday night?
- Where did you live when you first left home, and who else was there?
- What did you wear when you wanted to look your best?
Falling in love and starting out
- How did you and Dad first cross paths, and what was said?
- What did you do on your first date, and what did it cost?
- What did your parents make of the person you brought home?
- What was in your first apartment or house together — and what wasn't?
- What did a week of groceries look like when you were first married?
- What was the first big thing the two of you saved up to buy?
Raising a family
- What do you remember about the day each of us was born?
- What was dinnertime like — who cooked, who set the table, what got eaten?
- What was the hardest year for the family, and what got you through it?
- What rule did you enforce because your own mother had enforced it on you?
- What did you do in the evenings after we were all in bed?
- What did one of us do as a kid that we've still never heard about?
There is a version of your mother you have never met — the girl she was before you, the choices she almost made.
What she knows now
- What piece of your mother's advice turned out to be right?
- What did you go without so that we didn't have to?
- Which friend have you kept the longest, and how did you manage it?
- What do you still do exactly the way your mother did it?
- What would you tell the woman you were at twenty-five?
- What's a place you'd go back to tomorrow if you could?
How to use these questions
Ask them in her kitchen if you can. A mother at her own stove or table, hands busy, talks more freely than one seated across from a phone that's obviously recording. Bring one question from each section rather than working down the list. The goal is a conversation, not a form.
When an answer lands on something interesting, follow the noun. If she mentions a green coat, ask where the coat came from. Save the rest of the list for the next visit; having questions left is a reason to come back.