A Mother's Memories: If only I could go back....

My daughter, just a few weeks old

Several years ago, when my daughter was in her late 20's, I finally managed to put together her baby book (birth through age two). Each day for weeks, I holed up in our home office, cranked up some music, scanned in old photos, and racked my brain trying to remember details from decades ago. Each time, I felt myself being transported back in time to 1980, 1981 and 1982. It was an emotional roller coaster ride full of joy and pain, gratitude and remorse. Each day I shed new tears remembering the precious times my daughter and I had had together, agonizing over remembered mistakes, longing to go back in time to hold her little body again, and wishing I had been paying closer attention to the exact moment she first smiled, when her first tooth came in, when she sat up all by herself. What was the date she took her first steps? Was I even in the room, or had I been at work and only got to hear about it secondhand? 

Anyone who has raised a child and then allows her/himself to reminisce will know what I am talking about. I was so busy living my life that some of these momentous occasions slipped by unmarked on my life's calendar, although I know without a doubt that I celebrated them at the time. But somehow I can't help but feel I didn't give each moment enough attention. Maybe fireworks had been called for and all I had to give was a smile and then, quickly, a look forward to the next stage of development. Why hadn't I taken life slower and appreciated each achievement my daughter made with more awe and wonder? I know the answer to that question and it's complicated. My life as a single mother was complicated back then.

At the end of my scrapbook project I felt both elated and let down. I was glad I had finally produced a baby book for my daughter, but I was also going to miss the emotionally exhausting trek down memory lane each day. There's something a little addicting about the regular stirring of emotions.

The Bittersweet Pain of Nostalgia

Grandma and Grandpa in their basement antique shop in Lincoln, NE

Parsing through old photos I've scanned onto my computer, I feel a pang of longing for the past that stabs my heart and kicks me in the gut. I am looking at pictures of my grandparents back in Lincoln, Nebraska, where I lived for a few perfect years when I was young: my grandpa's antique shop in the musty basement of his house, a group shot of my cousins, aunts, uncles, my great Aunt Esther standing in my grandparent's rose garden in the backyard, my youthful 30-something parents, my younger brother and sisters as babies, me and my older brother still cute and unaffected. I see these images and I am suddenly there, a child surrounded by a large, loving extended family.

My father moved us to California when I was eight, to take a teaching job, a million miles away from Grandma and Grandpa. I cried as we headed out of town, feeling as if a limb was being amputated. We would visit 'back home' once in a while, for a family reunion or a special anniversary, but it got harder and harder to make the trip.

Sometimes I think about going back to Lincoln to find my grandparent's old house, a place I remember as Utopian: concrete lions at the base of the front porch stairs, water melons and roses growing in the backyard in the summer, a lovely porch swing I long to go back to and often do, in my mind, when I can stand the bittersweet pain of being there again. I remember summer nights with siblings and cousins, catching fireflies while my parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents sat on the front porch (excuse me while I wipe my eyes). We don't have fireflies in California - an entomological shortcoming in my book, if there ever was one.

Me (on the floor looking bewildered) with my older brother holding our baby sister, and some cousins - probably at Christmas which we always spent with the whole family.

A few years ago, when my husband and I were looking to buy another home, we walked into an old house that smelled of ripe apples and wood. I nearly swooned. I was immediately transported back in time to Grandma's house and filled with such longing I couldn't keep back the tears (our realtor politely ignored my reaction). I fell in love with the house, wanted to walk into it everyday and smell that smell, feel those feelings (I am, without a doubt, a glutton for punishment). I often buy apples and put them in a bowl for the sole purpose of smelling them as they ripen and rot. We didn't end up buying that house, and the house we live in now has many years to go before it has that lovely aged, lived-in scent I love so much. I will probably be long gone by the time it does.

I looked up my grandparent's old address online. The house is still there, but I don't think I'll ever go back to see it. If just thinking about the house creates such emotion in me, I think that actually seeing it again would either be a huge disappointment (reality is a poor replacement for our idealized memories) or I would have to be scraped up off the ground after a complete emotional meltdown.

I once read that when we feel nostalgia, we are actually longing for heaven. I like that....

My brother and I with our grandparents, most likely after church on a Sunday
Circa 1958'ish

Remembering.... What?

Groovy suede poncho and 501 button fly Levis: circa 1971

I could remember lots of stuff back then. 

Why can't I remember things? I've never had a good memory, so I can't say this is a recent development, although I know it's getting worse. I find it very odd, this forgetfulness. I'm pretty sure it's nothing as serious as Alzheimer's, at least I hope it's not, but it bothers me that it seems to occur more frequently these days. At least I think it does....

Quantifying how much I actually do remember is difficult since I don't know how much I'm forgetting. I mean, how do you know what you're forgetting unless someone else brings it up? And even then, the other person could be lying.

One benefit of a bad memory is that it saves money on books. Sometimes when I'm reading a book I'll feel a vague sense of deja vu. Have I read it before, or just the cover jacket? Or was it that I read one of those annoying 'teasers' they sometimes put at the end of books, giving you just the first chapter or so of the next book from the author. No matter. If I can't remember the story, what difference does it make? I always save books I like because I know will enjoy them just as much the next time I cycle through them.

I can't help but wonder if my poor memory is related to my poor sense of direction. I am really bad. I recently got confused about which direction I should turn after coming out of a store at the mall (a mall I have gone to for 20 years). I walked the entire length before finding a landmark that hit home making me aware of my error. I just gracefully did a u-turn and casually hiked back the other way. I was alone, so who was going to know? Even worse, I got turned around in my own neighborhood once (okay, twice). True, I'd only lived in the area about 4 years at that time. Barely long enough to get the hang of things, don't you think?

My poor memory could also be related to the fact that I spend a lot of time inside my head and not enough time looking around me. No. That sounds good, but I don't think that's the problem (that's a whole other story). It must be some inner ear thing.

Genetically Speaking

My two girls, 28 years apart: my daughter, Emily, on the left, her daughter (my sweet Lily) on the right. Guess things really don't change, do they?