The memory keeper

Recently, on my regular trip bringing the girls to town for school, we spotted a rainbow against dark blue rain clouds, stretching its arch over ash trees glowing in the warm wash of light from the sunrise.

“Look at the rainbow girls!” I declared as we pulled out of my little sister’s driveway and up on the gravel county road. I stopped the car so they could get a good look and then we followed it the next 15 miles to town. As the colors grew darker and more vibrant, the girls looked out the windows to name the colors they were spotting. Light pink melting into red into orange, “I see yellow and turquoise and purple!” yelled Rosie. “And blue!” my niece Ada piped in from the way back. They’ve learned the colors of the rainbow, but, according to Edie, the oldest, the real thing seemed different. There were colors that were hard to name, not properly identified in the textbooks and worksheets she’s familiar with and it sort of bothered her.

I thought about this as I watched the arch of those colors sweep vibrant across the sky and then slowly fade away as rainbows do. These things in life that can’t be replicated or adequately described, the sights and moments the camera fails to fully capture, that are too fleeting or deep feeling that all our efforts sort of fall flat, how can we make ourselves know it when we’re in it? How can we make our hearts and bodies remember once it’s passed?

And then I thought maybe I was living in one right then and there in that car looking at the rainbow on our way to school. Even the arguing I was witnessing about who knows most about rainbows and Rosie describing (in detail) what she thinks all of her friends are going to be wearing to Kindergarten’s “Hat Day” in her small but loud matter of fact voice, my niece Ada pulling her cowboy hat off and on and backwards and forwards, Edie making sure they both know the rules for recess—this version of them—these girls—will not be my passengers tomorrow.

Tomorrow they will be one day older and maybe then they will know more about rainbows, or how to subtract seven from ten, or what it feels like to be left out or to perfect her cartwheels or make a brand-new best friend…

And I won’t be the same either. We never are, are we? It’s just that the slow change in us is much more gradual than the light fading from the sky, the colors changing on the leaves, the air getting cooler. We marvel at those leaves, that sunrise, that rainbow, but how often do we stop to marvel at ourselves and the life we’ve built over this passing of time, time that feels too slow before it feels too fast…

Oh, this time of year makes a nostalgic woman like me worse for it. I notice a good portion of ankle sticking out from under the hem of my oldest daughter’s jeans and wonder how I missed her growth spurt. I mean, how do they do their growing without us noticing every new centimeter stretching toward the sky?

Last weekend we took the girls our riding their horses on a beautiful fall day. We took them out to notice those leaves changing and to learn about paying attention on the backs of their animals. Edie asked me then if I knew the Tall Tale of Paul Bunyan. I told her it had been a while. And so, she told it, word for word, inflection by inflection as we rode through the tall grass, past the stock dam and across the creek bottom and up toward the barnyard again. And now that I’m thinking about it, there’s still not much of the Paul Bunyan story I retained from her retelling, but oh, the way my daughter’s voice rose with excitement getting to the punch line, the way it filled the quiet hills with a chatter, the way she remembered so well and the way we all were together under the warm fall sun, on the backs of horses, together? I will reach for that moment when I’m lonesome or scared or ailing or worried. I won’t remember the length of my daughter’s hair or the color of her shirt or maybe even how old we all were, what year, maybe she was 7 or 8, Rosie 5 or 6. And I won’t be able to describe it and it won’t matter to anyone else really anyway, that day we all rode together slow and easy and Rosie was nervous and so the story helped her and I declared, like I do, “Well, that was fun,” when we arrived home to cook supper again, get ready for bed and up and at ‘em for another morning of growing up and growing old…

In time Edie will forget the details of the Paul Bunyon story, she’ll need to make room for fractions and grocery lists and tall tales will likely be pushed from the priority. But I will remember her here, the way she was that autumn day. I was made to remind her when she needs reminding…because I am her mother, the memory keeper.