For the Record

I have 118 text messages in my phone from my mom. I clean out my text folder from time to time, but of course I can't delete that thread, no matter what. I'm worried that someday when this phone dies I won't have them anymore and then what will I do? It's the last set of direct correspondence that I have from my mother. I can read her actual words to me, in her conversational tone, asking me all the everyday things she always asked me. I'm going to try to take some time one of these days and transcribe them so I have them in writing somewhere forever.

Every time I open my message folder, I see my Mom's picture next to that thread, with her most recent message highlighted. It actually reads this: "Worvfvjrdtitr    Worchestid e sauce. B N pp P."

I had asked mom why her sweet and sour ham always came out differently from mine. I'm pretty sure Worcestershire sauce is what she meant to say. Reading that message makes me feel so many things; I giggle a little bit because she could never say that word correctly, much less spell it, and it was always a little laugh we had between us. "The W sauce," she would say instead. But it also makes me so so sad, because she sent me that message on June 14th of last year, and it signaled the end of her fine motor function. In a few messages before it, she said she was having trouble texting. Only a month before that one, she detailed the outcome of one of the doctor visits - the one where the doctor said she had blocked eustachian tubes and they would get a plan in place to "fix" the vertigo. Of course, they couldn't fix the vertigo. It wasn't blocked eustachian tubes, it was CJD, and all those endless visits to specialists and ENTs and audiologists and physical therapists were a huge, gigantic, waste of time.

Sometimes I can function pretty well when I think about my mom in generalized ways. I feel sad, but it is manageable. When I look through those messages, though - the back and forth banter, the questions about my day to day happenings, the things that are as simple as sharing a recipe - I feel this crushing weight of sorrow; I can barely breathe. I can miss the idea of mom, and be okay. But missing my actual Mom is maybe the worst feeling I have ever had in my whole entire life.

I hold on to these messages with a fierceness I don't recognize in myself. I hold them because they are a tangible receipt of our relationship; physical proof of the closeness we shared. Sometimes I need the physical proof of it, when vague and cloudy memories don't suffice. They are also a record of her illness, in a roundabout way. In the early messages, she updates me on this doctor visit, or that one. This diagnosis; that prescription. As they go on, she gets more frustrated, and also more brief. When they stop altogether, at the W sauce, the abruptness of it reminds me once again how it felt to have her taken from us so early. She wasn't ready. I wasn't ready.

I wish more than anything that I had had the foresight to record more moments with her. I wish more than anything that our daily back and forth wasn't reduced to 118 messages, some of which are simple exchanges with only a word or two. I hope this blog, and the words I record here, will stand up over time. I hope someday my kids will read them and FEEL me. I hope I can remember to leave all the things here that they will need. I hope I can leave them enough of myself so that when I'm not here they won't have to miss me so much. 

It's the Little Things

Most days I'm pretty sure I'm doing this parenting thing all wrong. (I can list a hundred examples from last week alone.) But every now and then, a little glimpse of something promising comes through, and I get to feel kind of warm and sunshiny for a few minutes.

I came home from the store, and Aaron met me at the front door whispering rather cryptically, "Would you please go help Cooper? He's upset."

Cooper has this way about him; sometimes when he's mad or upset, he won't talk at all, he just broods in a corner with a dark expression of discontent. He also has a knack of telling you only so much at a time. Getting information out of him is a little bit of an art form, so I didn't ask Aaron anything further. I just hurried into the kitchen where I found my son at the sink, wringing a giant sponge in a bucket and sniffling. 

"Cooper, what's wrong?" I asked.

He was so flustered and upset, he just kind of frowned and kept wringing.

I tried again: "Cooper! What's the bucket for? Is something wrong?"

He turned to me with the most worried expression and sputtered, "Mom, I was playing frisbee and I threw it and the wind took it."

Hmm. That seems to be no big deal, so I'm a little puzzled at the tears. I ask for clarification: "Did it hit something?"

"No." Sniffle.

"Did you lose it in the lake?"

"No." Sniffle.

"Well, where is it?"

"It landed on the neighbor's deck!" Big, worried eyes.

"Okay. Did you go and get it?"

"Yes." Sniffle. Sniffle.

"Then what's the problem?"

"I walked on to the deck to get it, and my shoes were muddy and I left big muddy footprints all over her deck!"

Oh.

"Did you wash it off?"

"Mom, I tried to wipe it with my hands, (presents filthy, muddy palms that match the smudges of mud that I am now noticing on both his shirt and pants) but it just smeared everywhere!" Deepening frown, and we are nearing tears. "Will you help me?"

Of course I will. We walked out to the back yard, and sure enough, four kind-of-smeary size 3 tennis shoe prints were clearly visible on the neighbor's wood deck. He slipped off his shoes (which didn't occur to him the first time, apparently) and scrubbed the deck clean. It only took a few minutes, but I could visibly see his worry lines ease and the tension leave his shoulders when it wiped off easily.

I don't know how many kids would worry about this kind of thing, but I'm kind of delighted that he worried enough to make it right. I'm pretty sure our neighbor wouldn't have thought twice about the footprints, but at least Cooper is pausing to consider his effect on his surroundings. I really wish he would transfer those same feelings of responsibility to keeping his room clean or remembering not to leave sticky plates on the living room floor, but hey - baby steps. I may be failing all over the place otherwise, but in the category of teaching them how to be a good neighbor, I have at least one mark in the win column.