Can you recite a poem from memory? Which one(s)? Why or how did you end up memorizing it?
A friend asked on Facebook about what poems people might have committed to memory. That has sparked a great list of entries.
For me the answer is "Jabberwocky," by Lewis Carroll. For some reason--lost now in the mists of time--when I was in junior high or high school I thought it would be a great birthday present for Older Brother #3 if I memorized this and delivered it with dramatic flair. Turned out I'd guessed right; he seemed delighted, if somewhat puzzled.
I can still deliver chunks of it, although it's not seamless from beginning to end; I may need to brush up on it now, along with the fencing thrusts that go with "One-two! One-two! And through and through! His vorpal blade went snicker-snack. He left him dead, and with his head, he went galumphing back."
Then there are the arms thrown wide and the loving embrace that goes with, "'O hast thou slain the Jabberwock? Come to my arms, my beamish boy! Oh frabjous day! Caloo! Callay!' He chortled in his joy."
Thinking about this reminded me of Mom and the many poems she had committed to memory as a child, when teachers required kids to memorize and deliver poems before the entire class.
When she recited poetry she did so with dramatic flair--could be where I got that. Exaggerated expressions, eyebrows raised high, voice intonation dropping to a whisper where the words called for that.
She sometimes did "Little Orphan Annie". All I can remember of that one is the opening line: "Little Orphan Annie's come to our house to stay."
One of my favorites was "Hiding," which I had thought was a Robert Louis Stevenson poem included in the book A Child's Garden of Verses, since I remember reading that so many times as a child. Turns out it's by Dorothy Keeley Aldis. "I'm hiding, I'm hiding, and no one knows where, for all they can see is my toes and my hair. And I just heard my father say to my mother, 'But darling, he must be somewhere or other!'"
Another favorite was indeed by Robert Louis Stevenson--"The Swing": "How do you like to go up in a swing, up in the air so blue? Oh, I do think it the pleasantest thing, ever a child can do."
We had a swingset in the back yard next to the grape arbor that Younger Sister and I played on for hours. I don't remember feeling as if I was going up into blue air, exactly, but I do remember the soaring freedom and pumping my legs as hard as I could to try to get the swing up higher and higher until I shrieked half in fear, half in excitement.
My very earliest memory as a child actually involves my mother and poetry, in this case by yours truly. I'm not sure it would be in my memories now if it weren't for the number of times Mom told this story, which makes me think yet again that memories are created primarily through repetition.
The memory consists of fragments: Outside in the back yard. Billowing whiteness around me and the whooshing sound that went with it. Blue sky, sunshine, green grass underneath.
My mother's version: I was 2-1/2 or 3. (She actually wrote this all down on a piece of paper and dated it, so if I can find that I'll have documentary evidence of the exact date.)
She was outside hanging sheets on the clothesline while the breeze whipped them around, and I was playing under the clothesline.
I paused in my play, looked up, and said, "Oh Mother, oh Mother, what a beautiful day!"
Just then the wind died down. I paused, then went on, "The flowers are blooming and the wind's gone away!"
Mind you, the idea that a toddler addressed her mom as "Mother" sounds a trifle over the top to me. That's something that happens in books about well-bred English children, not a kid in the back yard of a house outside of Lewiston, Idaho, surrounded by wheat fields.
On the other hand, I've always loved language and playing with words. If I had recently been told that "Mother" was another label for my mom I could well have been playing with that word, testing it out as something I could call her instead of Mommy. She both read and recited to us a great deal so the possibility of me being able to put together a rhyming phrase doesn't surprise me.
Mom speaks only Jabberwocky now, and constant repetition was one of the early signs of her dementia as it developed. But when I was a child and she recited poems to me I marveled at the power of her memory.
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Holding Mom
A few weeks ago I got this email from my older sister, who has been on the front lines for my parents ever since they moved to Lewiston over a decade ago to live in housing appropriate to my mom's increasing dementia:
"Just thought I should share this sobering update. I have noticed lately that Mom seems thinner and she is often sleeping when we stop by. I checked with the nurse and she said that Mom is not eating much. Most of the time they have to feed her to get her to eat anything, although she does have days where she does a little better. The nurse said this is what to expect since she is in the end stage of the disease, and added that she would be surprised if Mom made it to summer. Of course she also expected Dad to go a good year before he did, so it is just a guess on her part. Still, the nurse got my attention. I always kind of thought their deaths would come in close proximity. I am sure that somewhere inside Mom's poor tangled self, she misses her lifelong companion and is ready to go."
Dad died late last November, having made it past his 95th birthday. We didn't tell Mom. After he spent some time in the hospital for hip surgery and pneumonia, when he came back she regarded him with suspicion and no longer seemed to retain that last bit of connection that had outlived the departure of almost everything else she ever knew, including the names of her children and how to speak English. (I dubbed her speechlike vocalizations "Klingon," a nickname that stuck among all the Star Trek fans I grew up with.) She can't retain or fully comprehend anything we say to her, and if she could, why give her even that passing moment of pain before the new information vaporized?
After Dad died we moved her into a smaller single room at the care facility and she began to retreat into herself even more. When I got my sister's email I laid plans to get to Lewiston for a visit.
Not exactly for Mom, since she doesn't know who I am, although she brightens when she sees me. They're sort of for me--a fulfillment of a sense of duty to the mother who did such a good job for so many years even though that woman packed up her bags and left a bit at a time, years ago. They're definitely for my older sister, who has borne the brunt and who can skip a visit if I make one.
Over the past few years I've felt lucky that I usually got a good visit. "Good" meant that Mom was awake, seemed happy to see me, and might even occasionally get a phrase or sentence out in the midst of the Klingon.
The last time I was down for a visit to see Dad a few days before he died, with my older daughter and her husband accompanying us, at the lunch table Mom brought out quite clearly, "Aren't we having fun!" with a pleased expression. We heartily agreed that yes, yes we were.
My visit this Monday is one I'll cherish. She looked at me a bit uncertainly when I arrived and said to her, "Hi, Mom, it's your daughter here to visit!"
She asked quite clearly, "Who am I?"
"You're Gladys Greene, and I'm your daughter," I said, squeezing in alongside her on the big upholstered chair she sat in facing the TV, where a very young Clint Eastwood confronted the judge in Hang 'Em High.
"Buh--" she began, looking at me and raising her eyebrows questioningly.
"Yes, I'm Barb," I answered, thinking that she really did seem to be trying to get my name out and had the right linguistic association.
She smiled and began telling me something in Klingon. Thanks to Second Daughter pointing out years ago that one could interact with her quite smoothly by simply ignoring the meaninglessness of the words and responding solely to tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language, I'm pretty fluent in our interactions. I smile, nod, provide verbal filler like, "Oh really!" or "I see" when she pauses, and generally go with the flow.
As my friend Maggie said years ago about visiting her mother-in-law who had Alzheimer's, "You're going to a foreign country and observing the culture. It isn't your job to try to change them--you just use good manners, thank them, and then come back to your country when the visit is over."
Mom seemed worried about something. She went on at length in Klingon and then asked me something like, "How did you manage all those people?"
I said, "Oh, it went all right. It was fine." She didn't seem convinced.
"When was this?" she asked.
"A couple of weeks ago--a while ago," I answered.
The phrase "a while ago" seemed to get stuck--she couldn't repeat it back and puzzled over it, and was still worried about whatever it was I'd done with all those people.
I leaned forward, put my arms around her, patted her back, and said, "It's all right. It will all be okay."
Immediately I felt her relax into my arms as her arms went around me in return. She gave a deep sigh, then another. I rocked her a bit, holding her and patting her back. She pulled back, looked at me, and said, "Thank you very, very much." I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around her again.
Victoria, a South African aide I hadn't met before, stopped by our chair and asked if I wanted her to take our picture--I was so glad she did.
We stayed like that for 20 minutes or more, mostly silent. Every once in a while she gave a little start--perhaps that falling sensation that gets you when you're falling asleep was happening--and I'd pat her back again and tell her it was all right. She would relax again. I got tears in my eyes more than once as we sat together, holding each other.
I realized how little loving touch she receives any more and how important that is. She is assisted, moved, bathed, and more by very nice aides, but they have to handle her in a very clinical fashion. With Dad gone there isn't anyone there every day to give her hand a squeeze or make eye contact and smile with something passing between them.
When it was time to leave I eased my arms out from around her, told her I needed to go, and kissed her on the forehead, telling her I love her. She yearned toward me--I could see it in her expression--and I stroked the side of her face. She sat with eyes closed, absorbing my touch.
I didn't want to go. It makes me smile just thinking of how contented we were, holding each other. It was the best visit ever.
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"Just thought I should share this sobering update. I have noticed lately that Mom seems thinner and she is often sleeping when we stop by. I checked with the nurse and she said that Mom is not eating much. Most of the time they have to feed her to get her to eat anything, although she does have days where she does a little better. The nurse said this is what to expect since she is in the end stage of the disease, and added that she would be surprised if Mom made it to summer. Of course she also expected Dad to go a good year before he did, so it is just a guess on her part. Still, the nurse got my attention. I always kind of thought their deaths would come in close proximity. I am sure that somewhere inside Mom's poor tangled self, she misses her lifelong companion and is ready to go."
Dad died late last November, having made it past his 95th birthday. We didn't tell Mom. After he spent some time in the hospital for hip surgery and pneumonia, when he came back she regarded him with suspicion and no longer seemed to retain that last bit of connection that had outlived the departure of almost everything else she ever knew, including the names of her children and how to speak English. (I dubbed her speechlike vocalizations "Klingon," a nickname that stuck among all the Star Trek fans I grew up with.) She can't retain or fully comprehend anything we say to her, and if she could, why give her even that passing moment of pain before the new information vaporized?
After Dad died we moved her into a smaller single room at the care facility and she began to retreat into herself even more. When I got my sister's email I laid plans to get to Lewiston for a visit.
Not exactly for Mom, since she doesn't know who I am, although she brightens when she sees me. They're sort of for me--a fulfillment of a sense of duty to the mother who did such a good job for so many years even though that woman packed up her bags and left a bit at a time, years ago. They're definitely for my older sister, who has borne the brunt and who can skip a visit if I make one.
Over the past few years I've felt lucky that I usually got a good visit. "Good" meant that Mom was awake, seemed happy to see me, and might even occasionally get a phrase or sentence out in the midst of the Klingon.
The last time I was down for a visit to see Dad a few days before he died, with my older daughter and her husband accompanying us, at the lunch table Mom brought out quite clearly, "Aren't we having fun!" with a pleased expression. We heartily agreed that yes, yes we were.
My visit this Monday is one I'll cherish. She looked at me a bit uncertainly when I arrived and said to her, "Hi, Mom, it's your daughter here to visit!"
She asked quite clearly, "Who am I?"
"You're Gladys Greene, and I'm your daughter," I said, squeezing in alongside her on the big upholstered chair she sat in facing the TV, where a very young Clint Eastwood confronted the judge in Hang 'Em High.
"Buh--" she began, looking at me and raising her eyebrows questioningly.
"Yes, I'm Barb," I answered, thinking that she really did seem to be trying to get my name out and had the right linguistic association.
As my friend Maggie said years ago about visiting her mother-in-law who had Alzheimer's, "You're going to a foreign country and observing the culture. It isn't your job to try to change them--you just use good manners, thank them, and then come back to your country when the visit is over."
Mom seemed worried about something. She went on at length in Klingon and then asked me something like, "How did you manage all those people?"
I said, "Oh, it went all right. It was fine." She didn't seem convinced.
"When was this?" she asked.
"A couple of weeks ago--a while ago," I answered.
The phrase "a while ago" seemed to get stuck--she couldn't repeat it back and puzzled over it, and was still worried about whatever it was I'd done with all those people.
I leaned forward, put my arms around her, patted her back, and said, "It's all right. It will all be okay."
Immediately I felt her relax into my arms as her arms went around me in return. She gave a deep sigh, then another. I rocked her a bit, holding her and patting her back. She pulled back, looked at me, and said, "Thank you very, very much." I leaned forward and wrapped my arms around her again.
Victoria, a South African aide I hadn't met before, stopped by our chair and asked if I wanted her to take our picture--I was so glad she did.
We stayed like that for 20 minutes or more, mostly silent. Every once in a while she gave a little start--perhaps that falling sensation that gets you when you're falling asleep was happening--and I'd pat her back again and tell her it was all right. She would relax again. I got tears in my eyes more than once as we sat together, holding each other.
I realized how little loving touch she receives any more and how important that is. She is assisted, moved, bathed, and more by very nice aides, but they have to handle her in a very clinical fashion. With Dad gone there isn't anyone there every day to give her hand a squeeze or make eye contact and smile with something passing between them.
When it was time to leave I eased my arms out from around her, told her I needed to go, and kissed her on the forehead, telling her I love her. She yearned toward me--I could see it in her expression--and I stroked the side of her face. She sat with eyes closed, absorbing my touch.
I didn't want to go. It makes me smile just thinking of how contented we were, holding each other. It was the best visit ever.
Related Reading
A Pause to Remember
Today on Twitter someone mentioned running across a picture of a friend from college that made her stop to remember someone who is gone now. I thanked her for that reminder to stop and think about the people we've lost.
That brought me back to the post I wrote about my friend Christianne Sharman, among other posts I've written about people who have touched my life and who are gone now.
In the past year three of my uncles died along with my dad. They were old, they had lived long and successful lives, but it still hurt to lose them.
I can still hear their voices and I hear Christianne, who had a wonderful voice.
I want to stop every so often to remember. For those of us who did a lot of growing up before the Internet we don't have a thousand gigabytes of sound and picture available just a click away. I have no recordings whatsoever of my uncles' voices. I have to rely on my memory and that will fade with time.
I do have a DVD of my dad thanks to brother Jim, who interviewed Dad for a story about his career as a World War II bomber pilot, but I haven't watched it since he died last November. I need to do that.
In the meantime we have memory, which is all we've ever had, and it needs to be cherished. The cave paintings of Lascaux may still be there but the full richness of what they stood for lived within the beings who painted them. The story of Gilgamesh meant so much more to real people listening to real storytellers than it can mean left to us on clay tablets. The repetition in The Odyssey is there because that aided the memories of those who performed it. We tell the same stories time after time at family gatherings because there's something about the way we hear it together that carves those memories deeper and deeper.
So here's to Uncle Russ, who looked so much like my dad, his older brother, and to his son Jerry Joe, who would have been my age had he not been hit by a driver in a pick-up truck while riding his bicycle--something that finds a haunting resonance for me now in my work in bicycle advocacy.
Here's to Uncle Wayne, with the hearty laugh, the knock-knock jokes, the loud Hawaiian shirts, and the ranch in northern California that we visited for family reunions. I still have a wooden winery box made by his company that I got as a kid on a tour of one of the wineries he supplied with shipping containers; it holds some of my sewing supplies and I think of him every time I use it. I remember his eternal patience when we rode in the motor home with him and Aunt Lorraine all the way from Lewiston, Idaho, to Cloverdale, California, for a visit, playing Elton John's Greatest Hits and singing "Crocodile Rock" at the top of our lungs. That's 855 miles of patience, mind you.
Here's to Uncle Bud, who had my birthday--or I suppose I had his birthday since he was born long before I was!--an architecture who designed many schools in California. He featured prominently in a story my mom told about challenging him to a race to see who could eat an ice cream cone fastest, during the Depression when an ice cream was a very rare treat. He chowed down only to find that she was still enjoying her cone in leisurely fashion when he finished first in short-lived triumph, and Grandma Humphrey made Mom hand over the rest of her ice cream cone in a lesson about selfishness as the older sister who should have known better.
And here's to my dad, who died Nov. 27, 2012, after a long life well-lived.
Pay attention to the people you love so you can hear them when they're gone.
Parenting Up, Parenting Down, Parenting Across
This year has brought many changes and transitions. In chronological order over the course of roughly six months: Second Daughter graduated from high school; I accepted a new job that meant leaving a job I'd held for 14-1/2 years; we moved across the state into a 500-square-foot borrowed condo, away from the town where Eldest Daughter lives with her husband; I took Second Daughter across the country to college less than a month after starting the new job, then turned around and spent a week at national bike conferences, then did another one-day trip for work; as I settled into the new (and very demanding, challenging, fulfilling, rewarding) job I realized I can't keep running the start-up Bike Style business I launched last year and started thinking about how to wind it down or hand it off; we got through a major fundraising event for the Bicycle Alliance and I traveled some more to meet more bike advocates and then visit my younger sister; and as we made plans to head back to Spokane for the Thanksgiving weekend we learned that after a fall, a broken hip, surgery, pneumonia, and a lung infection, my 95-year-old dad appears to be approaching the end of his days.
As I read the emails among his six children about the issues and decisions I can see our upbringing at work and credit both Dad and Mom with raising us to be both pragmatic and compassionate.
That makes me think about my parenting, the kinds of adults my daughters will be when they face similar decisions in the (hopefully far distant) future, and where I stand right now as the filling in the sandwich.
My younger daughter chose a college 3,000 miles away to pursue her dreams in musical theater. Once she'd chosen that focus I knew she'd have to be far away to get close to the bright lights of Broadway. I'm okay with that--and I'm not just saying that.
The Buddha taught that attachment causes suffering. I don't want the kind of attachment to my children that does that--the kind in which you want them to be, do, or say certain things. (Think of the dad who considers his glory days as the high-school quarterback the high point of his life and pushes his son to play football and you'll get what I'm talking about.)
I know a few very attached moms who are what I call "smothers." (I might add that my daughters also use this term. They don't want one.)
The smothers cling to the sweet, dependent baby-years memories and miss recognizing that their children are growing up into amazing young adults. Those days are fond memories but if we focus too much on those we miss the wonders of the present moment.
If we've done our jobs well, our children are prepared to enter the world without holding our hands any more to cross the street. They start to make adult decisions with adult consequences. If we shelter them from those consequences we leave them unprepared for the day when we're not around to rush to the rescue.
I've been a free-range mom with free-range kids for years, with the goal of equipping my daughters with savvy and skills to negotiate life without my help. I've never been one of those attack helicopter moms who executes a strafing run on anyone who interferes with her precious darling's happiness. The latest term I learned from a magazine article is the "snowplow mom"--she removes all obstacles from Little Darling's path. So how prepared can Little Darling be for the real world?
Maybe I feel this more acutely right now because I'm facing that day with my own parents. I'm not the first to point out the similarities between the care we provide our children and the care we provide our aging parents. I'm thinking about how their parenting prepared me to raise my daughters, and prepared me to cope with the changes they themselves face now too.
I still have some "parenting down" work. These days it primarily involves an electronic funds transfer with a touch of mothering, along the lines of, "You should get a winter coat. Here's some money because that's more cost-effective than shipping a coat from Seattle to New York." (As my best friend Betsy says, "It's great when your child's problem is one you can solve with a checkbook.")
I do a little "parenting across". That's how I think of what I do now with Eldest Daughter, who has just finished her first year of marriage. Right now she has to deal with her husband's recent surgery; I can't do much from a distance to be helpful but I can let her know I'm there if she needs to talk and tell her how happy the two of them look with each other.
And then there's "parenting up." When I visited my dad the day before Thanksgiving he was frail and weak. I wanted to give him a hug and tell him everything would get better the way I used to for my daughters. But that isn't true. I can give him the hug, but not the false reassurances.
I don't have the daily responsibilities now; my older sister takes care of the ER visits, the paperwork, the decisions. (I had those back when they lived in Spokane but they've been in Lewiston for over a decade now.) The resemblance to parenting is clear, but without the bright future we envision for our children.
Dad is very deaf now so we write him notes, to which he responds with a smile or a word or two. Mom's vascular dementia makes her impossible to communicate with, although she did say clearly, "We're having fun!" in telling us a long story in what I refer to as her Klingon speech.
Thus I can't tell either of them what good parents they were. They didn't smother. They expected us to do our chores, study hard, get a job. They wanted us to fall in love. (Not everything worked out every time on that front, mind you, but the fact that all six of their children persevered and ultimately found a lasting love stands as a testament to the example set by their 68-year marriage.)
I can tell them I love them as they face the final passage. I can't do the hard work for them. But that's not what parents do.
As I read the emails among his six children about the issues and decisions I can see our upbringing at work and credit both Dad and Mom with raising us to be both pragmatic and compassionate.
That makes me think about my parenting, the kinds of adults my daughters will be when they face similar decisions in the (hopefully far distant) future, and where I stand right now as the filling in the sandwich.
My younger daughter chose a college 3,000 miles away to pursue her dreams in musical theater. Once she'd chosen that focus I knew she'd have to be far away to get close to the bright lights of Broadway. I'm okay with that--and I'm not just saying that.
The Buddha taught that attachment causes suffering. I don't want the kind of attachment to my children that does that--the kind in which you want them to be, do, or say certain things. (Think of the dad who considers his glory days as the high-school quarterback the high point of his life and pushes his son to play football and you'll get what I'm talking about.)
I know a few very attached moms who are what I call "smothers." (I might add that my daughters also use this term. They don't want one.)
The smothers cling to the sweet, dependent baby-years memories and miss recognizing that their children are growing up into amazing young adults. Those days are fond memories but if we focus too much on those we miss the wonders of the present moment.
If we've done our jobs well, our children are prepared to enter the world without holding our hands any more to cross the street. They start to make adult decisions with adult consequences. If we shelter them from those consequences we leave them unprepared for the day when we're not around to rush to the rescue.
I've been a free-range mom with free-range kids for years, with the goal of equipping my daughters with savvy and skills to negotiate life without my help. I've never been one of those attack helicopter moms who executes a strafing run on anyone who interferes with her precious darling's happiness. The latest term I learned from a magazine article is the "snowplow mom"--she removes all obstacles from Little Darling's path. So how prepared can Little Darling be for the real world?
Maybe I feel this more acutely right now because I'm facing that day with my own parents. I'm not the first to point out the similarities between the care we provide our children and the care we provide our aging parents. I'm thinking about how their parenting prepared me to raise my daughters, and prepared me to cope with the changes they themselves face now too.
I still have some "parenting down" work. These days it primarily involves an electronic funds transfer with a touch of mothering, along the lines of, "You should get a winter coat. Here's some money because that's more cost-effective than shipping a coat from Seattle to New York." (As my best friend Betsy says, "It's great when your child's problem is one you can solve with a checkbook.")
I do a little "parenting across". That's how I think of what I do now with Eldest Daughter, who has just finished her first year of marriage. Right now she has to deal with her husband's recent surgery; I can't do much from a distance to be helpful but I can let her know I'm there if she needs to talk and tell her how happy the two of them look with each other.
And then there's "parenting up." When I visited my dad the day before Thanksgiving he was frail and weak. I wanted to give him a hug and tell him everything would get better the way I used to for my daughters. But that isn't true. I can give him the hug, but not the false reassurances.
I don't have the daily responsibilities now; my older sister takes care of the ER visits, the paperwork, the decisions. (I had those back when they lived in Spokane but they've been in Lewiston for over a decade now.) The resemblance to parenting is clear, but without the bright future we envision for our children.
Dad is very deaf now so we write him notes, to which he responds with a smile or a word or two. Mom's vascular dementia makes her impossible to communicate with, although she did say clearly, "We're having fun!" in telling us a long story in what I refer to as her Klingon speech.
Thus I can't tell either of them what good parents they were. They didn't smother. They expected us to do our chores, study hard, get a job. They wanted us to fall in love. (Not everything worked out every time on that front, mind you, but the fact that all six of their children persevered and ultimately found a lasting love stands as a testament to the example set by their 68-year marriage.)
I can tell them I love them as they face the final passage. I can't do the hard work for them. But that's not what parents do.
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