What are you thinking about?

Friends and family have remarked that I have a great memory. I think this is arguable, as I have a lot of trouble learning my students' names and just when I can remember them, the semester ends and I promptly forget almost all of them. Some might say this is my brain being efficient about what information I need to hang on to, but why is what we ate or wore at an event a couple decades ago any more important? But, even when I do have sharp memories, I only have pieces of the puzzle. I don't have the whole picture because I can't know what other people were thinking during those events.

This is why it is particularly delightful to me that my kids are reaching the ages and stages of metacognition (thinking about their thinking) where they can tell me about their memories of certain times we have shared and let me know what their interpretation of them was. The other night, I was eating dinner with just the older two children (Eva, 15, and Eli, 12) when the subject of childhood mistakes came up. Eva remembered dropping a jar of jelly and having it shatter and cut her foot. I remembered that too, but not with the specificity of Eva, who recalled me scooping her up and washing her feet in the kitchen sink as I checked for what was blood and what was jelly. Eli recalled putting hand soap on the floor of the bathroom thinking whoever came in would fall down ... then realizing he had trapped himself standing by the bathtub. He also recalled locking the door to the bedroom as he left, thinking he was imprisoning his older sister inside, only to discover that she could open the door. Both of those events blended into the blur of babyhood parenting for me. From the ages of 26 to 36 I was pregnant or breastfeeding, changing diapers, working part time and/or full time. While some zany and precious moments stand out, others are just lumped in with "All the times I had to use a paperclip to unlock a door." You know the movie "While You Were Sleeping"? That decade of my life could be called While I Was Nursing (and wishing I was sleeping).

It's hard to let go of the days of board books and musical toys in exchange for algebra homework and "whatever it is the kids are listening to these days," but these conversations are proof this next chapter is going to be wonderful too. I just keep getting to know these people we created a little better.