My first memory isn’t particularly sentimental. In fact, it involves road kill. Given the story of my childhood, it does, unsurprisingly, involve moving as well. I was just over two years old. We were moving from Wisconsin to California and driving along somewhere between the old and the new: Mom, Dad, our cankerous cat, Calico, and me. We passed a skunk that had met it’s unfortunate end on the highway. I remember playing in the gun metal grey station wagon that was our family car from the time I was a baby until I was six years old. Although it is unthinkable now in the age of mandatory child restraint systems, I was loose in the very back of the station wagon, happily engaged in playing with one of my favorite dolls, Karen, while my parents talked away the long hours up front. We were driving through what seemed to me to be a forest of pine trees, when I smelled it, the putrid, lingering stench of a skunk. I had never smelled such a thing before and called out to my mother to ask what the offensive scent was. She explained about the skunk and there my memory fades into oblivion. I can’t remember anything of that trip before or after the skunk but I think something in the overpowering smell must have imprinted the memory forever on my brain.
Thomas is almost three and I wonder what his first memory is or will be. Will it be something amazing and dramatic like watching his brother slip into the world or will it be something sweet but mundane such as playing outside in our yard? There is a strong possibility that we will be leaving this house in the next year or so and I wonder, will he remember this little green house as his first home; give a smile at the thought of the wooden alphabet carefully arranged on his walls or laugh at the memory of himself streaking through the living room, hall, dining room, and back again, naked as a jaybird, while we chanted “Go Thomas go”? Although the incidents of yelling in this house are few and far between (and generally well-earned on Thomas’ part), I sincerely hope his first memory won’t be the time I yanked him across the room and yelled at him for laughing as his brother fell out of the sling (and was, thankfully, caught just in the nick of time with no harm done save to have been unpleasantly startled).
Bedtime has been rough lately. Henry seems to be transitioning from three naps to two with the result that some days he seems to think that bedtime is actually “third nap” with his body insisting on being awake for another two hours, while his mind protests. The little bub is also cutting his first tooth and his swollen gums and sporadic episodes of collapsing into tears attest to the pain it is causing him. Jeff is mired in grading reams of paperwork and writing a never ending parade of lectures while I am exhausted from my return to work. We simply don’t have the ability to devote ourselves to Thomas’ lengthy bedtime needs and as such he has had the privilege of an increasingly late bedtime. I don’t actually mind too much; I miss Thomas fiercely since I’ve gone back to work and he get’s his night owl tendencies from me so we just stay up until it is clear that he will fall asleep easily. This past week I knew it was going to be a particularly long night so I proposed a late night bake-a-thon to Thomas. We agreed on an apple pie and “pie cookies” (shapes cut out from the leftover pie dough and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar to make a sort of cookie) and set to work. I haven’t made an apple pie since before Henry was born; tart, firm apples haven’t been available locally and the thought just hadn’t occurred to me. The store is full of California grown Granny Smiths now and I set Thomas to work prepping apples with our wonderfully low-tech apple peeler. I was surprised at how capable he was in making an apple pie at almost age three as compared to last year at age two. He can turn the peeler himself, he helpfully pointed out the small spots of peel that the machine missed, and then began to question me as to how the peeler was constructed (“Is that a Phillips screw, Mama?”). When it came time to make the filling Thomas was able to name most of the ingredients without prompting (he is forgiven for forgetting the cornstarch) and questioned why I wasn’t adding vanilla (answer: because we were using sugar already flavored with vanilla beans). Henry, awake from “third nap” and ferociously gnawing on his fingers thoroughly loved mouthing the apple cores and sucking all the juice from them. Thomas was able to roll out the dough with me; admonishing me when the flattening crust deviated from a perfect circle. He choose an assortment of animal shapes for the cookies (among them a giraffe and turtle, of course) and was allowed to stay up until they were done so he could sample one before bed. It was a wonderful evening and I found myself wishing that he would remember it, not just for next week, but for forever. There was, thankfully, no skunk involved but I hope that the smell of the pie, and perhaps the taste of it for breakfast the next morning, will seal the memory in his mind; a perfect little slice of life in a warm kitchen, cooking with his Mama and giggling with his brother.
