Judie Osborn-Shaw on a wedding, a thousand-mile bike ride, and a life met with both arms open.
Some people write a memoir to look back. Judie Osborn-Shaw writes like someone still leaning forward into the next good thing.
You can tell a lot about a person from how they describe their wedding.
Some people describe the venue. Some people describe the dress, or the centerpieces, or who was annoyed at whom by the end of the reception. Judie Osborn-Shaw, writing her memoir in Memorygram, describes none of those things first.
She describes the dog.
"Blue was our Best Dog," she writes, on a list of who was there. The list also includes friends who arranged the flowers, a friend's band, and Randy, the groom, who showed up in his 501's. Judie wore her grandmother's dress from 1912. They held the ceremony at a rustic coastal ranch. It was a potluck. They sang Devoted to You.
For their honeymoon, they watched Ghostbusters at the theater. "It was a perfect weekend," she writes.
"People will still say it was a memorable wedding, but I like to think it was also memorable because of the love that radiated from all."
— Judie Osborn-Shaw
That sentence is Judie in miniature. The graceful pivot away from credit. The instinct to notice what was happening in the room rather than what she pulled off as the bride. The phrase "the love that radiated from all," which she'd repeat about a hundred other rooms, if you let her.
It's the spirit her whole book runs on.
The Open Road
A few years before the wedding, Judie and a friend rode their bikes from California to Colorado.
A thousand miles, give or take, on touring bikes loaded with everything they needed. The kind of trip that either teaches you you don't like people very much, or teaches you the opposite.
It taught Judie the opposite.
"The experiences, the more wonderful people I meet the more I love. There's so much to gain."
— Judie Osborn-Shaw, on the road from California to Colorado
There's so much to gain.
It's the kind of sentence you write down in a journal at twenty-something, watching the highway disappear behind you, and then spend the rest of your life trying to keep believing. Judie has, by all evidence in her memoir, kept believing it. The wedding came after the bike ride. Motherhood came after the wedding. Each one, in her telling, has the same posture: lean forward, expect good things, notice the people.
Motherhood
When her son arrived, Judie did what she had always done. She paid attention. To him, and also to what he did to the rooms he walked into.
"To watch him bring smiles and sunshine to stranger's faces, and to bask in that special smile just for you."
— Judie Osborn-Shaw, on motherhood
That's Judie's memoir. A bride who noticed the love. A cyclist who noticed the people. A mother who noticed the smiles he gave to strangers and the one he saved for her.
It's a life met with both arms open. And now, finally, written down.
So that everyone who comes after can know exactly what it looked like when one person decided, early and often, that there was so much to gain.
Every life has a story worth keeping. Memorygram helps you write yours.
Judie's memoir began with a single prompt and a thousand stories ready to be told. Yours can begin too.