Day 28 - I Remember Now -- I Forgot

Day Twenty-Eight
I Remember Now – I Forgot

At the advanced age of older-than-you-are-none-of-your-business-how-old-I-am-you-probably-know-anyway, I have finally learned the value of being stupider than I am. When I was young, I was much more brilliant than I am now. I knew all the answers –and sometimes even knew the questions before they were asked. I spent a lot of time listening to me think and, frankly, I was an Einstein. I would share my brilliant thoughts, thinking, “You lucky dogs – this is good stuff.” I invariably had to defend myself because hardly anyone agreed. Nobody was following me around, writing down my pearls of wisdom before they fell, unnoticed, into the bottomless sea of un-appreciation. I had a way with words but, somehow, it was on a road that always led back to me and never took me anywhere else.

I find it is much easier now to ask questions more and give answers less. In ALL my older-than-you-are-none-of-your-business-how-old-I-am-you-probably-know-anyway years, I have never experienced the depths of pain, despair, and hopelessness so many others have felt. My God, they have had to defend their children with their very breath while all that was in them felt insecure and inadequate. They have struggled with depression deeper than I have ever felt – to the point of being hospitalized. They have had abusive husbands; children that took from them with one hand and fingered them with the other; times when they had to choose between supper for themselves and snacks give their child to take to school the next day. I am amazed now at how little I know. There is really a lot of value in finding the stupid in me.

I learned this from my Mom. My mother has a real grasp of the stupid in her. This sounds bad – but it is really the highest compliment I can pay anyone. I need to get my Mom a t-shirt that says, “PLEASE don’t ask me to play Pictionary.” Those of us that ask her to play would ignore this t-shirt, but it doesn’t hurt for her to try – plus it would give us something else to giggle about. Mom is really an awful drawer (that word doesn’t look right – “Person who draws?” “Artist?” I really hesitate to use this word and my mother in the same sentence.) She draws a little head, then extends the neck about 3 times the head’s diameter. She always draws a really round belly (all of her people look pregnant. I wonder if this is because she had five kids.) Then she draws two itty bitty legs. If her figure needs company – like if she is drawing the word, “sky” and needs to draw a bunch of people looking up (“Why didn’t you draw clouds and some birds, Mom?” “I didn’t think of it.” “Mom, I think the reason is that all of your pictures just HAVE to have pregnant people in them.”), her additional pregnant people may be beside, inside, above, extending out from or below the initial figure. Then, while we frantically guess what her drawing represents (“Pregnant?” “Family?” “Circus?” “Elephants on Parade?” – we start to just say anything. Every once in a while, we are right. This is a little frightening.). Mom always draws hair on her people. Somehow, having hairy people in her drawing doesn’t really help us. Mom keeps making her people hairier and hairier, saying, “You’ll never guess this,” but by now, we really are incapable of guessing -- her drawings have us breathless in laughter –so she stands there in front of the board, holding her marker and grinning at her crazy family.

I have always suspected that Mom is much more capable than she lets on. We really only play Pictionary because of Mom. She is so good-hearted about our teasing. It is a time when the family feels the closest with each other. I actually suspect she is a closet Picasso, sending paintings into the Metropolitan Museum of Art behind our backs and drawing pregnant giraffe-people in front of us. I have years of silent observation to back this up. I watched her babysit my sister’s children and saying things like, “I just can’t figure out how to open this,” or “Do you think that we should make lunch now?” She looked so genuinely puzzled. The little twirps fell for it every time. They never realized that she had to make all of these decisions herself before they showed up. They weighed the heavy matter in their little heads and wisely directed their grandmother. Even to this day, 20 years later, they are still offering her assistance no one else can solicit from them – changing light bulbs, opening jars, giving her advice, rearranging her plants, sweeping the cobwebs from her ceiling – all the while grinning about how she needs their help, wondering how she gets along.

Please don’t misunderstand me – I am not saying I am as smart as my mother. Mom really is very wise. I am so un-wise, still so self-absorbed, still trying to find ways to get the roads from my thoughts to stop going in endless circles back to me. Somehow, Mom’s roads lead to Jesus.

I need to remember that I forgot.