Do you remember, Grandma?

My sons and their first-borns

The time is ripe for looking back over the day, the week, the year, and trying to figure out where we have come from and where we are going to, for sifting through the things we have done and the things we have left undone for a clue to who we are and who, for better or worse, we are becoming. But again and again we avoid the long thoughts….We cling to the present out of wariness of the past. And why not, after all? We get confused. We need such escape as we can find. But there is a deeper need yet, I think, and that is the need—not all the time, surely, but from time to time—to enter that still room within us all where the past lives on as a part of the present, where the dead are alive again, where we are most alive ourselves to turnings and to where our journeys have brought us. The name of the room is Remember—the room where with patience, with charity, with quietness of heart, we remember consciously to remember the lives we have lived.
          ~Frederick Buechner, A Room Called Remember: Uncollected Pieces

My 3 year old grandson Sam is at that point in his young life where he can remember things that have happened to him in the past and can bring them up for discussion. He is a verbal child as well, and chatters happily away pretty much most of the time. To spend any time with him is to be engaged in conversation with him. When we visited him and his family in February to celebrate his brother's birthday, I was greeted at the door by a shy boy, but one who quickly warmed up to me. My grandmother's heart was warmed when he took me by the hand for a tour of his house, pausing often to show me things and ask "Do you remember, Grandma Barb? Do you remember this _____ (book, toy, the dog, etc.)"  He was telling me, in his 3 year old way, that he remembered them and remembered me. I was thoroughly charmed.

Sam's father, my son Matt, had a birthday this week. As is custom, I called him to wish him a Happy Birthday. Things have changed a bit, though, with the use of the smart phone. First, I texted Matt to make sure he was home and at a place where we could have a good conversation. Then, when I placed the call, I used the Face Time feature, which provides a real-time streaming picture to the other person's smart phone. This meant I could talk and see Matt, and of course, see the two little ones crawling all over his lap anxious for a chance to see and talk to Grandma Barb. And of course, Grandma was eager to see their little faces as well. And say hi to their mother!

Sam was there all right, and dominated the conversation as much as he could. His father asked him if he could tell me something or other about an event in his day, and he paused as if to think for a moment. "Do you know?" he asked his father. "Sam, don't you remember? You did____" his father replied. "Do you remember?" Sam asked again. His dad clarified and then Sam described the event to me. I was reminded that often, when Sam can't remember something he has been asked about he will answer by asking again "Do you remember?"

My sons birthdays always are a time when I stop to remember them as children and my own life as a young mother. Both sons' birthdays fall within a week of one another in April, and it is a time I pause to remember most fondly. So many happy, happy memories of their growing up... I loved being a mother, and I love my boys as much as any parent anywhere could love any child. I have photo albums to pour over any time I want to remember an event, but I have found that often the most touching moments aren't in the photo albums. They live inside my mother's heart and memory.

With age, those little boys of mine grew up... but I have found that, happily, I have a new generation of children to love and to create memories with. Along with Sam there is my grand daughter Addie and Sam's brother Will. I love them as much as any grandmother can love a grandchild... But sometimes, at least one week in April, I look back and remember the memories created by a previous generation of little ones.

Yes, Sam. Grandma remembers!

My new little memory makers...