The Best Gift I Ever Gave My Dad Is Something My Family Will Treasure for Generations

Top view of a person holding a Storyworth book, titled A Collection of Life Stories, a child's finger pointing at the picture on the cover.

Dads are notoriously tough to shop for. But my dad is usually a breeze.

Still, there’s one gift I’ve given him that stands above the rest: a subscription service that helped him write a book.

At age 68, my dad has a slew of interests that have long made it easy for my brother and me to find gift-giving inspiration. He loves theater and live music, so we got him tickets to Merrily We Roll Along and Lake Street Dive. He’s an American-history buff, so we’ve given him biographies of John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

My dad has also always wanted to write a book. But what do you give the aspirational author in your life?

It’s not like seeing his name in print was new to my dad. He worked for decades as an eye doctor, and as one of the country’s leading experts on contact lenses, he wrote many well-read medical articles.

In retirement, he took a writing workshop. And I could tell he was itching to find new outlets for his writing. So when my husband told me about Storyworth, a service that prompts you to share personal stories and compiles them into a hardcover book, I saw a perfect fit for my dad.

Watching my dad’s book come together filled me with the kind of joy that’s usually reserved for a parent witnessing their child take the stage for the first time. And it’s a gift that helped him achieve a true dream: writing a book.



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