Your mother’s life, in her own words

Sanota chats with her on WhatsApp once a week, listens to her voice notes and turns a year of stories into a beautiful hardcover book. She writes nothing and installs nothing.

Give as a gift

149 € one payment
30 day money back

A Sanota hardcover book and an unbroken WhatsApp conversation on a phone, on a pale oak table

How the gift begins

Three unhurriedsteps

One decision is asked of you. After that the story is free to take its own time.

The gift

You give the year

Tell us who the gift is for and add your own greeting. You get the gift straight away, ready to send on or to open together at the kitchen table.
The conversation

She tells it

Sanota asks the week’s question on WhatsApp and listens to her answer. It remembers what she has already said, so the next question follows from her life and not from a list.
The book

The book comes home

At the end of the year her stories are bound into a hardcover book. Not a folder of clips: a finished volume your family can take down from the shelf for years.

A storyteller answering Sanota’s message in her own voice

Nothing to write, nothing to install

It happens whereshe already is

Every week Sanota opens the conversation with one question in WhatsApp. She replies with a voice note whenever it suits her, in the kitchen or on the bus. Sanota listens, asks the question a good listener would ask next, and carries the story on.

I never thought my ordinary life would read like this.

From conversation to the page

Spoken memories,written into stories

Sanota gathers what she says into whole, carefully written chapters. Her turns of phrase and her humour stay in the writing.

Sanota Week 12

What was the house you grew up in like?

10.30

0.42 10.32 ✓✓

You mentioned the range and how warm the kitchen was. Who usually sat around that table?

10.34

0.31 10.36 ✓✓

MARGARET · IN HER OWN WORDS

Chapter 4

The house at the
end of the lane

The landscape of my childhood was drawn in soot and green. Our house stood at the end of a lane where the tarmac gave up and the fields began, and behind it the moor rose in that long, patient way it has, brown in winter and purple for three short weeks in August. It was not a grand house by anyone’s reckoning. It was a whole world all the same, and its small front garden took in every hour of light the northern sky was willing to give.

The house at the end of the lane

If I had to keep one sense from those years, it would be the kitchen. On winter mornings the range was awake long before any of us children were. There was the settling of coal, the low mutter of the kettle, and my mother’s hands in flour before seven o’clock. The smell of bread and warm sugar did not simply fill the rooms. It went into the walls, and it made a harbour that no weather outside could trouble.

That kitchen table was the middle of our lives. We gathered there, family and half the lane besides, for neighbours came in without knocking and sat down as though they had always meant to. The day’s worries were put on the table with the tea and made smaller by being shared. My mother ruled it all with a gentle firmness. "You do your best and you look after each other," she used to say, and those few words have carried me further than anything I was ever taught in a classroom.

MARGARET · IN HER OWN WORDS

My father taught me the language of work. He was a quiet man whose diligence spoke louder than any speech, and he smelled of sawdust and cold air. When he mended the gate or saw to the shed I was allowed to follow at his heel, and being handed a plank to carry or a brush to hold was never only a job of work. It was being counted, and it was pride passed down through the hands.

There were four of us children, a loud and lively lot. We did not always agree, but underneath the squabbling ran a loyalty that never broke. We learned early what has since proved to be arithmetic: a shared joy really does multiply, and a shared sorrow shrinks to something you can carry. That went for the whole lane too. Sugar was borrowed in both directions, a roof was mended by whoever was free that Saturday, and when a proper occasion came the everyday was dusted off and the good, thin china was brought out.

The house at the end of the lane

What I remember most brightly, though, are the summers. The garden came into its own: sweet peas along the fence, the heavy scent of stocks in the evening, new potatoes lifted for Sunday and berries rattling into the bottom of a pan.

Margaret by the window of the house where she grew up — In the garden at the end of the lane

MARGARET · IN HER OWN WORDS

In the evenings, when the work was done, we sat on the back step. The wind moved through the sycamore and a curlew called somewhere out on the moor. Those were the hours when time seemed to stop altogether. The sun hung above the fields a long while, gilding the rim of the world, as though it could not quite bring itself to go down.

When I close my eyes now and think of that house, it is not the walls or the furniture I see. It is the people, and the hours we had together. Life has taken me a long way from that lane, but I go back in my mind and sit on the step again, and the air smells of cut grass and coal smoke.

The house at the end of the lane

When the dusk finally came up the lane the house changed its shape. The yellow light in the kitchen window shone out against the darkening fields like a small lighthouse, and indoors the noises of the day settled one by one until there was only the slow tick of the clock.

Those were the hours when words were no longer needed; the plain fact of one another was enough. Lying between sheets that had dried on the line, I knew as certainly as I have ever known anything that whatever the world beyond the moor turned out to be, inside these walls we were safe.

That house did not only prepare me for the world. It gave me a compass, and the needle still points to the same things: love, honest work, and a deep gratitude for the smallest of days.

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A safe place for memories

She decides what she tells, and who reads it

Telling your life takes quiet, trust and clear boundaries. Sanota keeps to them.

30 day promise

There is time to see how it feels

If the year does not feel like hers, we refund the payment in full within the first 30 days.

The storyteller decides

The stories belong to the teller

Voice notes, subjects of conversation and unfinished stories are not shown to the person who gave the gift.

Kept in Europe

Recordings and stories stay in the EU

Everything she tells is stored on servers in the European Union, in Finland. It is never sold on and never used to advertise to anyone.

The gift now. The stories week by week.

A year to tell it. A book that stays

One decision gives her 52 unhurried hours of being listened to, and gives your family a book to come back to. Now is a good time.

A mother and daughter with a closed Sanota book in the light of a window

One decision, one price

Everything it takes is included

01
52 weeks of conversationsSanota opens the conversation with a new question once a week. She answers with a voice note, in her own time.
02
Conversations written into storiesEvery conversation becomes a whole chapter, written so that her voice and her humour survive the writing.
03
The finished book, deliveredOne hardcover book to read and approve before it is printed. Delivery about three weeks after approval.

One payment

149 €

No monthly fees and nothing to add later.

Give as a gift

Take your time. 30 day money back.

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Worth knowing

Questions people ask

Giving the gift, and telling the stories, is meant to take as little effort as possible.

Does she need to install anything?

No. Everything happens in WhatsApp, which she already uses. There is nothing to download, no password to remember and nothing to type: she answers by talking, the way she would to anyone else.

How does she begin?

After you buy, you come back here to finish the gift and you get a personal gift page and a card to print. She opens WhatsApp from it and sends the first message herself, whenever the moment suits her.

Is it the same question for everyone?

No. Sanota remembers what she has already told, so the next question follows from her life: the mill she mentioned, the sister she has not spoken about yet. A good listener asks the second question, and that is the one that matters.

What if a week goes by unanswered?

No harm done. The question waits its turn again and she carries on at her own pace. The year is a rhythm, not a deadline.

Does the person who gave the gift read the answers?

Not unless she wants that. Voice notes, subjects of conversation and unfinished chapters belong to her. The giver sees only that the year is under way.

When does the book arrive?

When the year of conversations is done, Sanota gathers the stories into a finished book. She sees it and approves it before anything is printed, and delivery takes about three weeks after that.

What does the 30 day money back promise mean?

There is time to see how it feels. If the service is not right for her within the first 30 days, tell us and we refund the payment in full.

Your mother’s life, in her own words

Three unhurriedsteps

You give the year

She tells it

The book comes home

It happens whereshe already is

The house at theend of the lane

She decides what she tells, and who reads it

There is time to see how it feels

The stories belong to the teller

Recordings and stories stay in the EU

A year to tell it. A book that stays

Everything it takes is included

The house at the
end of the lane