Browsing Through Time

Leila Lu Sorensen Miller

Oh, little darling of mine
I can't for the life of me
Remember a sadder day

I know they say let it be
But it just don't work out that way

And the course of a lifetime runs
Over and over again

No, I would not give you false hope
On this strange and mournful day

But the mother and child reunion
Is only a motion away

—Paul Simon
***

I was born in the 1960s, so my memories of that time are haphazard.

But if I close my eyes and let my mind drift...sometimes I still catch flashes of events from that era.

Like the day the a TV peacock unfolded its wings with a promise of "living color on NBC" (even though it was still black and white on our TV).

Or when a neighbor across the street warned us that something called the Beatles were "a threat to our way of life."

Or night after night of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley solemnly reading the toll of Americans killed and wounded in Viet Nam.

Or an AM radio voice announcing that Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated.

***

The girl up above, though? She was old enough to remember all of it.

***

She grew up on a farm in the middle of Nebraska, at a time when small family farms could still eke out a living. I remember visiting that farm, where her mom and brother lived with a little dog named Ralph.

I remember sitting high on her horse, Trixie, on a sunny day.

I remember sitting on her lap in a root cellar one night as a tornado roared past.

The thing that scared me the most, though, was the sound of a raccoon skittering across the roof of the old house...mostly because I didn't know what a raccoon was at the time.

Mom left the farm when she was 20, I think, and moved to Denver. She was 21 when she met my dad, 22 when they got married, and 23 when she had me. 

Along the way she worked a glamorous job with United Airlines, and left me with neighbors during the day. I didn't think anything of it, of course, because the neighbors' kids were great to play with, there was lots of Kraft macaroni and cheese, and mom was always there to pick me up in the afternoon.

***

Mom eventually left her job at United to stay home with me and my brother, who came along in 1968. A couple years later Dad got a job in Minneapolis, so off we went to a suburb called Apple Valley.

For some reason, Mom hated it. Even though she had friends there, women who took her on adventures she likely would never have gotten into on her own. 

Like the time they picketed the local grocery store for an entire week to protest high meat prices. Did it make a difference? That I don't remember. But one day the protest was over, and I don't recall hearing about it again.

Or the day we went to a Minnesota Vikings football game, then waited afterward by the players entrance to meet future hall of famer Mick Tinglehoff. Who, it turns out, went to the same little high school my Mom did.

Or the times she helped us dig tunnels and caves in the snow drifts that piled as high as the garage several times each winter.

Come to think of it, "Minnesota winters" may have been the reason Mom didn't care for the land of 10,000 lakes.

***

Browsing through photos of that era is a rabbit hole without end—and each one is its own little exercise in archeology. "Where was that taken? Who is that? Look how young they were..."

And there are *so many* of them. Giving each the attention they deserve could become somebody's life's work.

[sighs wistfully]

Mom peacefully passed away in her sleep sometime Christmas night. 

And while dementia had stolen many of her memories, just a few days ago she could still happily recount her childhood on the Nebraska farm where she grew up.

She loved to repeat the tales of her pet lambs and piglets—and she'd still get mad recalling the hens that would peck her and the roosters that would chase her around the barnyard.

Every time we talked she would ask about our current adventures in farming—and tried her best to convince us we should add pigs to our growing menagerie.

Her: "Piglets make wonderful pets!"

Me: "Yes, but they don't *stay* piglets, Mom."

And she would laugh.

***

I haven't thought about most of these things in a long time. It was a pleasant surprise to find them laying around my brain, waiting to be dusted off and held up to the light.

It occurs to me that memories are like the oldest Christmas ornaments in the box—precious and beautiful, but also frighteningly fragile. We can never be sure when—or if—we'll ever stumble across them again.

Or if we'll recognize them when we do.

***

I can't see the future but I know it's coming fast
It's not that hard to wind up knee deep in the past

It's come a lot of Mondays
Since the phone booth that first night

Through years and miles and tears and smiles
I want to get it right

—Jimmy Buffett, Coast of Carolina