I love the circularity of life, and the links my stroke-brain has made in my mind's store of memories.
When I was pregnant and growing a new manchild inside me, I used to wake up so hungry! My Mom and I were roommates at that time.
I'd just returned from a month in Florida-- dispatched to see to the funeral of her mother, and to assess the feasability of her dad's independent-living situation. Just widowed, and in the middle stages of Alzheimer's (the new senility of the 70's), my grandfather Bob squired me around all the elements of his Florida life.
Rotary Club dinners. Country Club luncheons and evening functions. Pontoon boat cruises with friends along Florida canals. The occasional shopping spree for wardobe to be his new partner in life's dance.
I cleaned out my late grandmother Margaret's closet-full of ballroom-dancing costumes for him, and there hung my own few semi-formal pantsuits. How strange to grow a manchild on the confused love and fresh seafood of my Florida grandfather! I loved the pool adjoining the master bedroom he had not used in years, which that he gave to me. (I loved finding the stash of tax receipts in his bureau, too!) I loved it late at night when he got me mixed up with his daughter and only child, my mother-- I could see now why she had always lit up, talking about her childhood-- he WAS a great dad for a girl!
I thought maybe it would be a good place to raise a child. But it was Bob's excellent wisdom that I return home-- "Oh, that's good news. But I'm not really ready for new babies, these days," he said one day when I told him why my new pants were getting tight, and why I was eating so much fruit at lunch.
I wrapped up the funeral after-thanks, secured a few more connections with his Floridian friends who had promised to look in on him, finished gathering the documents for the several years' unpaid taxes, visited Bob's attorney for last details and papers, and went back to Chicagoland.
My mom was a GREAT roommate, and a wonderful partner in pregnancy. We were close for the first time in our lives. Days were full of shared memories of Bob and Margaret, plans for the baby, and mom-talk. And she was an early riser.
So when I would wake up too hungry to stay asleep in the dawn hours, and stumbled to the bathroom, there she would be at the stove along the path, with a double-boiler full of oatmeal. She'd dish up a bowl of it and hand it to me, without a word, as I trudged back to my room with my eyes still half-glued shut. I'd sit on the edge of my bed, still mostly asleep, and slurp it down. I'd go right back to sleep and sleep for hours more.
"We have a SYSTEM!" she'd triumphantly say, later in the day. And she made a great batch of oatmeal-- just the right milk/oats ratio.
The manchild was born in due course, and he grew. My grandfather Bob did well for many years, sent his love often, had GREAT friends making sure he was doing OK, and got remarried to the most wonderful woman in the world.
My mom co-parented my son for about 7 years before her work situation prompted a division of households, and moves toward the city for us each.
The manchild and I moved into our own independent-living lives. I was so blessed to have had such a good foundation to try my best to pass along.
One day when he was very small and just learning how to get around the suburban neighborhood on his own, he bought me a gift. A coffee mug. A rather nice one, too.
He grew up. I grew up a little more too. We moved several times. I got married and blended my son rather suddenly into a new family.
The mug moved too, taking in turn the roles of coffee cup, office pencil cup, flower pot, etc., always with the warm memory attached of the gift it had been. Amazingly, it never did break or even chip.
My manchild is all grown up now, and living about 8 hours away.
I still wake up sometimes too hungry to stay asleep. It's been a real challenge trying different solutions! These have been urgently necessary because with my current stroke-brain, I find that my brain chemistry is simply not workable when I'm short on sleep. But I am not fond of daily drugs, preferring another solution that might work with less downside.
So, a night-time snack is clearly in order. No more double boilers with helpful moms tending them! Mom is not only far, far away-- she's now Bob's age. But the real problem has been that nowadays I live in a two-story world. By the time I safely navigate the steep steps in this old farmhouse, I'm wide awake. So this solution has been a long time in the mulling.
But I think I finally have a SYSTEM, as my dear mom still says. An old, saved jar to keep mice out of wholegrain cereal. A few sparkling-clean peanut-butter jars for dry milk powder, and nuts or sunflower seeds. A bottle of molasses for the scant teaspoon that takes away the nasty skim-milk flavor. ("Ensure" got nuthin' on ME!) An electric boiling pot to turn a mugful of this into a hot drink, with a little oatmeal sinking to the bottom for a few bites.
I only need a mug..... reaching into the cabinetry for a blue one out of the set.... which just barely hides an old tan mug I'd forgotten, shoved into the dark corner of the cabinet-- the Manchild's Mug, with its nice flat bottom that will not let me tip over the mess when I make oatmeal in the dark while my husband sleeps!
The circle-- can you see it now?-- goes all the way around, and I can see it each time I look at that mug. I can see it even in the dark, just by feeling for it as I set up some nice, hot, predawn oatmeal.
Such are the blessings of the post-50 decades! :~) I hope you have good circles, too.