Neither of them would remember this visit.

That’s what I realized as my father snuggled my youngest son. For the past ten minutes Dad had been clicking his tongue, and my 8-month-old clicked back at him. It was adorable.

“Want to see Grandpa?” my 81-year-old dad asked, his hands outstretched. Harrison happily went to him.

It was the fifth time in as many minutes. My dad kissed his cheek, my son lunged back to me, and my dad said, “My, he’s a sturdy boy. What’s his name again?”

It was the sixth time he’d asked that. Then the tongue clicking competition began again.

My dad has Alzheimer’s, and I could see the wheels churning in his eyes to recognize me yesterday. He doesn’t remember I have nine kids, either. He stared at me in shock when I reminded him, likely wondering when THAT  happened. (I wonder myself.)

“Want to see Grandpa?”

My son likely thought it was a game. He was grinning when he went over again to accept another kiss.

And I realized neither of them would remember that day. 

I didn’t even remember to bring in my phone to take a picture of them together, like I usually do. 

After we left, my dad would sit down to his large print Reader’s Digest and chuckle at the jokes he’d already read a dozen times that day, not ever realizing we were there. 

Harrison with Grandpa at 4 months old. He was happier yesterday. And of course, I didn't get a picture. Sigh.

It was the same with my 85-year-old mother, in the same facility, slowly dying of Parkinson’s. She looked at my son and slipped back into her native German as she had been during our conversation,“Wie sϋβ!” 

It means, “How sweet!”

Then she went on in alternating languages about what to do with the beige and purple houses, the people around her who “knew” things, and the new German words made up in the newspapers. 

Yes, she has dementia too, and wouldn’t remember the “Wonderful surprise!” of our visit. As we walked away, she slumped back down into her laz-e-boy chair, closed her eyes, and went back to fingering her fake pearls that made her feel dressed up.

So why did I bother, I wondered as I put my son in his carseat for the almost two-hour drive back home. Not one of the three of them would remember.

But maybe they would be affected, somehow. 

Perhaps we’re influenced by memories we don’t recall, but leave us with feelings that carry us through the day, the years. 

I have photos of Harrison with his grandparents, and when he’s older he’ll know that they held him and loved him for the brief time they shared the earth together.

And perhaps my parents will be left with a sense that something pleasant had happened that day, and maybe that’s enough.

I alone will remember the visit, and will be the bridge between the far-flung generations.

And maybe that’s enough.

I was born just days after NASA first landed on the moon.
I thought about giving a copy of this "How sweet!" picture to my parents,
but it would have overwhelmed their already-shaky grasp on reality.
I'm not that big of a tease . . . anymore.

 

The more kids I have, the worse of a mom I become.

Here’s the photographic evidence.

My youngest son, chewing on a stick. That has NOT been cleaned. Or sanitized. And was picked up in a PUBLIC park.

And what do I do when I find him sucking on a broken tree bit? Snap a picture, of course.

And yes, that’s grass on his face. His first course.

What am I thinking, letting him eat sticks? “Oh good—his first fiber.”

Only later when a college student walks by and glares at me for my gross negligence do I think, “Hmm. Is there something wrong with letting my 7-month-old eat sticks?”

Maybe there is.

I’m not exactly a disinfectant queen of a mother. When I see moms at the grocery store using those antibacterial wipes to clean the shopping cart handles, I think, “Good idea. I think my son may have been gumming that one.”

Then I realize they’re cleaning it off BEFORE their children sit there, not after.

Hmm. Am I doing something wrong?

So I took away the stick and gave him a sucker instead, compliments of the bank. I think the college girl glared at me again.

Child #9 knows the tastes of suckers (see, I'm even teaching older sister how to administer candy), Nerds, Smarties, Sprite, root beer, Kool-aid and even Dr. Pepper. (No, I don’t fill his bottle up with those! He just tastes them!)

(Besides, he can’t figure out how to use a bottle.)

Now I do have my limits. Although all babies seem to be part Labrador retriever, I do stop them from playing in the toilets. I don’t even take pictures first. And if they happen to get to the toilet brush, I plop them in a tub and read the warnings on all of the disinfectant bottles to see if any can be used on flesh. (Neither of them can. Yeah, I own only two such kinds of cleaners.)

But I let my babies crawl on the floor, and if they find a cheerio from breakfast still on the floor at lunch, I might just let them eat it.

I call it “Building Immunities.” I figure kids generations ago crawled through much worse, especially if they lived on a farm, or an industrial city, or in the country or . . . just about anywhere, I suppose. And they lived. If they didn’t, we wouldn’t be here.

I later checked my photo albums to see if I was this lax with my other children, imagining that I was much more vigilant 21 years ago when I first became a mom. But what I found were photos of other babies crawling through the dirt. Another little boy chewing a Ken-doll head. Children covered in mud. Little girls running around outside naked. 

In the dark. 

In winter. (You understand why I didn't post those, right? Social Services already has enough evidence.)

And then my first-born. There she was, just six months old, and I had let her get chicken pox. In my defense, I had the chicken pox too, caught when I substitute taught a kindergarten class. The next photo shows her destroying a newspaper. I remember having to wash all the newsprint off of her hands and face. And legs. Tummy. Feet. Ears . . .

But she survived. So have the others, so far, with no major problems (that we can see).

"Yeah . . . right, Mom. Building Immunities. We'll see what my therapist says about that in 20 years."

Apricots, legacies, and bathrooms

This is no ordinary bag of apricots.

It’s a legacy, a reminder of those who are no longer here, or leaving soon.

Apricots are the perfect fruit. In my mind, Eve hands Adam an apricot. She has a whole fig leaf apron full of them. And raspberries jammed in a pocket. (But that’s another story. And no, I’m not sure where Eve would have a pocket.)

Hey, those look like apricots!

I didn’t like apricots until I was about 11 or 12 years old. My oldest sister Judy, married with her own family, came to our house to pick apricots off of our tree during one of the rare years it produced. She taught me how their texture is firmer than peaches, less messy, and more subtle in flavor. And that flavor, when snatched from a tree on a hot July afternoon, was fantastic. She was right—I discovered I loved apricots as I picked them with her. Suddenly, she stopped.

“How many have you eaten?”

“About 5 or 6,” I told her.

“Well, stop,” she said as she popped another in her mouth.

Hypocrite, I thought. “Why?”

“Because these will make you the best of friends with the toilet around this time tomorrow.” She swallowed down another one.

“How many have you had?”

“Probably 20,” she said nonchalantly. “I’ve already cleared my calendar for tomorrow afternoon. I’ll hate myself then, but for now? Heavenly!”

She later confessed that on the drive home, she had to put the bucket of apricots in the back of her van, out of her reach. The next day she lived in the bathroom while her husband laughed at her.

“But it was worth it!” Judy insisted when I next saw her. “Fresh and free apricots come only a few weeks of the year, and some years, not at all. Eat them while you can!”

Each year my mother and I watched our apricot tree, cheering at the popcorn-like blossoms and hoping for a good crop. Then, two years out of three, a frost killed the blossoms.

But the mild springs? Well, one year we had a huge crop, and came home one day to see little orange bits all over the road in front of our house. Perplexed, we looked up on the hill where our apricot tree stood and saw that half of it was lying on the ground, the weight of so much fruit breaking it. Little apricots had rolled down the hill and became a mushy mess all over the road. Neighbors came to help clean up the mess, my mother made jam for two straight days—at the end, cursed the little things for being so darned plentiful that year—and Judy and I ate far too many again.

Judy and my mom in 2007 (clearly wishing they were eating apricots instead).

That was a long time ago. I moved away to the east coast, saw apricots for sale occasionally at the grocery stores for exorbitant prices, and remembered Utah apricots. Then we moved back to Utah in 2007 and occasionally got an apricot or two, and loved them.

Yesterday, a neighbor wrote on facebook how sick she was of making apricot jam, and I thought about my mom. She’s now 85 and fading slowly away. In hospice care, she doesn’t open her eyes, she doesn’t speak, and now she no longer eats. She won’t taste apricots or make jam this year.

My mom, at the end of May this year, when she was still sitting up and holding my littlest guy, just for a moment.

We don’t have that tree anymore, either. We sold the house, and the tree, last summer. If the haggard old tree is still there, I don’t know. I haven’t driven past the home since we sold it.

And I don’t have Judy, either. She won her first round with cancer, but it came back more angry for a second bout, and nearly three years ago, Judy passed away.

Me and my oldest sister Judy, in 2007. (No apricots in sight.)

But there are still apricots, brought to me by a dear friend, in a bag.

Yesterday, I taught my 4-year-old how to love them. After her fifth one I said, “We shouldn’t have any more. Too many will make you need to go to the bathroom a lot tomorrow.”

She nodded in agreement, but about ten minutes later came to me with another apricot for me to open and pit. “Just one more,” she promised. “The last one.”

I smiled and took one more as well.

Then ate about twenty-five more.

Today I’ve spent a lot of time in the bathroom.

And I swear I’ve heard Judy laughing at me and saying, But they’re worth it, aren’t they?

NIGHT GAMES! Games . . . at night

This is my front yard tonight. It looks like an untidy garage sale for bikes, and none of them belong to my children.

There are screams, yells, and squeals of pants-wetting delight well after 10pm, but no one in the neighborhood is calling the cops. Bless them!

This happens a few times each week, as soon as the temperatures warm up. Twenty+ kids are running around our and our neighbor’s yards.

It’s Night Games!

Uhh . . . that's not quite right . . .

. . . There we go! Stock photo of kids running madly as it grows darker!

The children range in my yard age from 4 to 15, both boys and girls. The older kids generously let little sisters pretend they broke through the lines of teenage boys gripping each other for “Red Rover.” Then there’s a heart-stopping round of “Hide and Seek.” Well, my heart stops because kids are running full speed towards my beloved 15-passenger van, and I’m torn between what would upset me more: a bruised child or another dent in my Big Blue.

“Ghost in the Graveyard” provokes some arguments, but I never get involved. I sit in the house with the windows opened listening to the activity. No adults ever supervise. It’s never occurred to any of us parents that we should. We keep band-aids on hand, a wet washcloth for the inevitable head-on in-the-dark collision, but otherwise, the kids negotiate, play, dare, hide in my recycling bin (wait—how’d he get in there? How will he get out?!), run, laugh and act like kids.

I love, love my neighborhood that not only allows this, but happily sends their kids to join ours.

We didn’t set a “play date” for this. The kids make some phone calls, run around knocking on doors, then around 9pm a small hoard has gathered in our yard.

No one wears helmets, although they probably should.

And the only lights on are the street lights a few houses down. The kids even get upset if there’s too much moonlight. The darkness adds to the tension, the excitement, the danger. And no—no one’s ever had a broken bone or needed stitches. (There’s probably been a bit of brain damage, but that will just make all of these kids more interesting as adults.)

This is childhood at its purest and finest! And even when I’m an old grandmother, I’ll let the neighborhood kids play Night Games in my yard. I may be the only one, but I’ll defend the children’s rights to be children for as long as I can.

No, not me in 40 years . . .

 . . . that'll be me, keeping it green for the youngsters!

The 80s weren't that great . . . sorry.

I’m sorry, 80s music, but I have no room for you in my life.

We used to be close, 25 years ago when I graduated from high school. I knew all your lyrics, all your melodies, all your moods. 

I’d dance to anything by The Communards. 

I went grunge before Curt Cobain tore his first jeans.

(Yeah, they make COSTUMES of the period. And people have 80s parties. And that's not good.)

I was so immature.

That’s what hits me every time an 80s tune drifts my way: what a teenager I was.

So I cringe.

I have friends who have downloaded every 80s hit, from the punk and alternative to the cheesy and the techno-whatever-it-was-called. 

And I can’t, for the life of me, figure out why.

Yep, the music's reached "that" status: fat oldster stuff.

Every beat from that era reminds me of my high school dreams.

And they were shallow.

Each melody makes me think of my plans.

And they were self-serving.

Every lyric recalls my philosophies.

And they were simplistic, silly, and short-sighted.

Why do I want to be reminded of where I was so long ago?!

Please, no.

I don’t!

My ipod is loaded with 850 pieces of music, nearly all of them from movie soundtracks. When I go walking, it’s to the sweeping orchestras that breathed life into movies like “Pirates of the Carribean,” “Transformers,” “How to Train Your Dragon,” and every Harry Potter.

The musicians I now idolize are the ever creative Hans Zimmer, Danny Elfman (another 80s soulmate who’s matured over the years), Patrick Doyle (had his 80s moments, too), John Williams, Nicholas Hopper, Thomas Bergersen, Rohan Stevensen, Henry Jackman, Alexandre Desplat, Michael Giacchino, Harry Gregson-Williams, Howard Shore, James Horner, and anyone else who creates depth of emotion, not just a catchy beat.

I confess, there are a handful of songs hidden in my music, placed there by family members who just couldn’t believe that I willingly gave away over 100 dvds of 80s classics years ago. Those tunes by Thomson Twins and the B-52s jar me every time I hit them while “shuffling” my music. It’s as if I’ve been thrown back in time 25 years ago, and I need to brace myself to face my teenage idiocy again.

But when it happens, it’s not so bad.

I see myself as I used to be, and I realize just how far I’ve come. In a way, it’s good for me to occasionally remember the 80s.

(And I thought those stuck in the 60s were sad.)

I just no longer want to live there.