Welcome to the Middle Ages

I used to have a brain like a steel trap. I could memorize whole books and reams of poetry, and recite at the drop of a hat. I never bothered with a calendar because I could tell you when I was going to the dentist or the eye doctor without consulting one, and I was truly formidable at Trivial Pursuit.

Then I had kids.

It's not clear to me just what the connection is between having children and a reduction in the amount of gray matter accessible, but the correlation is verifiable, I am convinced. One child made a dent, but two children started an inevitable decay, and the longer I have them, the more pronounced the decay gets. I don't know if I'll get some of my former capacity back when the nest empties or not. I'll let you know. Or you'll let ME know, because I'll have forgotten all about it by then.

I'm turning 49 this year, so I'm certainly classified as middle aged at this point, and I have no problem with that. But I find that I increasingly depend on paper and pen to substitute for the synapses which no longer fire without assistance. If I write it down, I remember to do it. If I don't, then there are no guarantees. Fortunately I have an innate fondness for lists, so this is not distressing to me, but sometimes I'll think of something and don't have paper handy so it never makes it onto a list, and in that case it's just a lost cause. Sorry. And my family is more or less trained to write things on the grocery list now, because they have all learned the hard, sad way that if you don't write it down then Mom doesn't bring it home. End of story.

At least I still remember their names--generally. My grandfather had a wonderful system for this because he couldn't remember names to save his life. All the males, of any generation, were Sonny, and all the females were Sis. He was one of those gentle old men who mostly just smiled and didn't say much to start with, so if you saw he was looking at you and talking at the same time you just assumed you were the Sis in question and listened up. It was usually worth it.

Luci Swindoll (or was it Patsy Clairmont? I don't remember!) says that as we age, we lose brain cells, which I believe to be true. But Luci (or Patsy, as the case may be) has a theory about where it is they go--into that turkey wattle flap of skin that connects your chin (should you be so fortunate as to have one) to your neck. She could be correct, as there does seem to be an inverse proportion type of situation at work there.

About eight or nine days ago, my husband was hunting for a word himself (poor baby, here it comes for him too) to describe shrubs that had been trimmed into the shape of animals. Well I knew darned well what that word was, but I sure couldn't bring it far enough up out of the morass to tell him what it was. I worked on that all week. Every day I would puzzle over what on earth that word was, and every day I would come up blank. It was driving me nuts. Last night, as I was trying to get to sleep, my brain wandered for convoluted reasons to the person of Marissa Tomei. That led naturally to the movie My Cousin Vinny, which led to that wonderful courtroom scene, which led to who on earth was the actor playing that judge? I'd been puzzling over that one for a few days also, and the closest I'd been able to come had been Edward Herrman, and I knew that wasn't right. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I had the answer--Fred Gwynne! Yes! And then I gasped, realizing that two brain cells had actually fired at one and the same time, and could I do it again? So I reeeeeeached out with every neuron I could summon, sat up in bed, and shouted "Topiary!".

My best friend turned 50 this spring, and so she and I are in this perilous age together. I'll typically turn to her and ask "Did you bring the thingy for the whoziwhatsit?" and she knows what I'm talking about. It's wonderful. I anticipate that in another thirty years we will have abandoned our husbands entirely, largely because we will have forgotten we ever had them in the first place, and will toddle gently into that good night, arm in arm, babbling nonsense in our happily demented way, and understanding every single word.

Love, Spud

Herds of Birds

This neighborhood tends to be wildlife central, and for the most part I love that. Recently we've seen lots of squirrels, owls, a hawk, a skunk, a raccoon as big as as large dog, rabbits, deer, Carolina wrens, European starlings, but fortunately not the ground hog or the possum that we've had hanging around in the past. Now that I think about it, I guess I wasn't too thrilled about the raccoon or the skunk either, but the skunk was such a novelty that I didn't have time to be anything but fascinated.But the really interesting things are the herds of birds. I know that technically they are a flock, but when I was growing up my family jokingly referred to them as herds, and it stuck in my head, and so herds they are. Besides, it rhymes.

Two stoplights north of our house is an intersection where I tend to be stuck every late afternoon, and that's when all the birds come out to play. I've never seen them up close, and so I don't know what kind they are, but they do a strange and wonderful ballet. It's an area with a lot of tall old trees, and we get hundreds and hundreds of birds there at a time. One large group of a hundred or so will rise up and swirl and swoop through the air, landing suddenly and just as suddenly taking off, while another group (or two or three) will be doing the same thing from a different tree base. The groups sometimes intersect, and sometimes do an end-run around each other, but there are never any collisions. I don't know how such large flocks communicate with each member just where they are going and when, but they do--the timing is perfect. They ride the air currents for fun, I think, and I'm the unintended beneficiary of their entertaining exercise. I'm always sorry when the light changes and I have to move on. The birds never seem to tire of this game, and a game it seems to be, and they stay around all through our unpredictable mid-western winters to play it. It certainly enlivens our gray winter skies.

Love, Spud.