Day 116
Image by @dilja96 at Unsplash
We are watching old seasons of Master Chef together, most nights after dinner. The other night one of the challenges was to make a blueberry pie. I said something like, “I’d like to try to make a blueberry pie some day.” As I reconstruct the next few moments here, I feel the movement in the room stop. Four pairs of eyes turn toward me. Somebody says, “You have, Mom.”
“Remember,” says another of the three children, “when Liz took us to that place and we picked all of those blueberries?”
[Vaguely, I think. I vaguely remember that, but it seems certain that without this provocation I would not ever have remembered this on my own.]
“You definitely made a pie,” says someone else. Nods and affirmations, mmmhmms and other votes of absolute certainty from all four members of my family.
“How old were you guys?” I ask. “Were you little?
Reader, they were little. They were in that little stage, all three of them, that encompassed years of my life that I do not actually recall. I have not blocked them out, these years. I just don’t remember. There is so very much I do not remember.
I was so tired. I was in survival mode. Keeping three young children, all born within four-and-a-half years, fed and occasionally sleeping and myself mostly fed and occasionally showered. During those days I felt present. And I probably was more than I am actually able to recall. But it’s as if my body and brain used up all of its fuel just existing and keeping the children thriving. There wasn’t enough left to imprint specific activities as memories anywhere. Certainly not the activities that happened only once, like making a blueberry pie.
I remember the daily trips to the playground and the weekly museum visits for story time. I remember dinners and bath times and most holidays. I remember dropping kids off at school and the one time I forgot to pick them up. But every now and then a conversation like the blueberry pie exchange happens, and I am reminded of how much I don’t remember.
It doesn’t make me sad. (It used to.) Or defensive. (I definitely used to swing this way, falling prey to the unwritten and somehow unquestionable narrative of the expectation of “perfect” motherhood.) Now I just kind of shrug. The other day I said to my family, upon confirming their “little”ness, something like, “Must have been during one of the years I don’t remember.”
Which, of course, is an exaggeration. Sort of.
But the eyes returned to the TV, and the subject was dropped. These no-longer-little people probably shrugged or rolled their eyes. Maybe both.
Parenting is full of moments you are certain you will never forget. You think, “Oh, I don’t need to write down how my sweet toddler mispronounces her brother’s name. How could I ever forget it?!” And then, years later you will ask your spouse, “Which kid was it who couldn’t pronounce the letter K?” (Your spouse has a better memory for these things, but he is not much of a writer-downer, and so you will be reminded until you forget once again.) Oh, right, it was E. So cute. Replacing all of her K sounds with T sounds.
Really, It’s so strange to know that there are so many things that I just cannot bring to the surface of my brain, and yet they are the very things that make my children who they are now.
Now.
Here we are, with older children, who can remind me of some of the things I have forgotten, and I find myself wondering if they will forget this time. Or, what they will forget about it. Will they forget the component of fear? Or is that exactly what they will remember? Will they forget how many people were sick? How many died? Will they forget how bored they are? Or how long it really was that we lived together in a quite small, closed bubble of five (once we know how long it really will be, once we are out of this pandemic living)? Or will they remember it all? Will these days make their marks, unforgettably, because what else do these children have for their brains to imprint on right now?
It seems a good reason to make a blueberry pie (again), honestly. The pie already has a backstory. And it will require acquiring blueberries — significant quantities, I assume. The children will witness at least a part of the making of the pie. (Our house is small. Also, the children visit the kitchen a lot.) The pie will become a part of our family pandemic story. It almost works to reframe blueberry pie as a central memory of our family quarantine time together. A memory they will all recall as they look back some day. It seems possible, even likely, that this blueberry pie do-over might be a memory I will hold on to, too. By baking this pie, I can almost assure a future family conversation that begins, “Remember that time you made a blueberry pie, Mom?” And continues, as someone else jumps in, “You mean the second pie? The one she made because she didn’t remember making one before?” {Commence eye rolls and guffaws.]
The kids, they don’t let anything slide, and no matter how hard I try, I will not be able to truly rewrite this pie history. But, it occurs to me now, as I cringe a bit at how much I’ve just written about pie, I can make this pie extra memorable. I will serve it for breakfast.
Stay safe, everyone.