Unstuck in time

As a youth, I loved Kurt Vonnegut's books. In this later phase, I find myself "unstuck in time," seeing the connections and constellations of the events of my life. When I am with my grandchildren, I see myself as a young mother, and I see my sons both as fathers to my granddaughters and as my own babies.

I point to pictures on my wall.  "That's Daddy, when he was a little boy." It makes no sense:  Daddy is a grown man, over six feet tall, not a baby.  To me, he is a baby, a boy, a man.  I am a girl again, a new mom, a grandmother.  My granddaughter clutches at my breast and shrieks that I can't give her what she wants.  She's angry! I'm just nostalgic for the days when babies fit so perfectly into the curves of my body and nursed themselves to sleep there, when needs were simple and I knew how to fill them.

It's nostalgia!  It isn't supposed to be Truth.  Yes, I was as clueless as any other new mom.  All that falls away with the years. All that remains is the memory of the smell, the touch, the sight of those fat little thighs, and the sweaty heads, and the little fist relaxing on your ample post-partum tummy. Oh, and the post-partum tummy:  I managed to keep that, too.

My Dad had mild to moderate dementia, and he sought refuge in the past. He had lost executive function, that ability to analyze a situation and then take action.  His short-term memory was shot, so he couldn't remember whether he had ordered in a restaurant, but he could describe in great detail the Jewish deli in New York where he first ate a knish, more than 60 years ago. ("Ya never had one before? Well, don't start today!" the guy behind the counter said, which Dad accepted as a challenge.)

The past was colorful and he was the hero.  The present was confusing and painful.  Who wouldn't pick the past?

The past is appealing to those of us without dementia, too.  The older we get, the more we reach back to examine.  How have we changed over time? Remember the day we bought that lamp? Did I ever tell you about when...?

I was talking with my sister today about waving a white handkerchief to signal surrender, and I said, "Remember how Dad always had a handkerchief?" "He should have carried two," she replied. "He was always giving one up to wipe our snotty noses in church."

That's what parents do. They carry a handkerchief not for themselves, but for the runny noses and bleeding knees and teary eyes of their children. They give up their jackets when their children need them, even if their children are 30 and should really know better.  Parents care for their children.

My middle child brought his family home to me for a week last month.  He and his daughter were both sick with colds.  It gives a mama equal pain to hear her child hacking with a cough whether that child is 1 or 33.

I heard my son coughing in the bedroom below me, and I remembered the night when my parents brought me a bowl of ice cream to soothe my throat. (Dairy is possibly not the best home remedy where mucous is involved, but it would have been ungracious to turn it down.)

I read somewhere that kindergarten children don't know what a handkerchief is, because no one carries them anymore.

I do. I collect them, and use them as a decorative window covering.  I have a special set for Christmas. I keep two in the purse I carry to church, one for me and one for a friend.

The day I got married, my dad had a handkerchief ready to catch my tears, a tender moment that brought me to tears this morning.  Lucky for me, he had a handkerchief handy.