Peace in the Valley

It's 11:15 p.m. and I'm sitting next to my mom in her hospital room at St. Thomas West.  She's resting comfortably, at least for now.  Classical music - from Channel 99 on the television - is playing quietly in the background.

There is peace in this room.  Peace and comfort, as I spend what likely will be my last extended period of time alone with my mom.

The sound of her breathing is comforting but the comfort is fleeting, as I know in the next little while her breathing will become more ragged and irregular, like earlier today.  It's hard to take when that happens because I don't want her to suffer or be in an distress or discomfort.

There is also love in this room.  A part of me wishes I could stop time and stay in this moment forever.  A moment where I could pretend my mom is going to get better, that she's going to wake up from a deep sleep, yawn and talk to me like she did four or five years ago, before the thief that is Alzheimer's disease began to steal her mind and her memories.

Another part of me is afraid to write about this moment, this night with her, as it unfolds.  To preserve it.  I'm afraid the memory will blind me, like staring straight at the sun.  The power of the moment and the rawness of my emotions frightens me.

Now is a time to be completely in the moment.  I can't afford to reminisce or look to the future.  The way to keep my emotions under control and my mind on the task at hand - escorting her to the other side and saying goodbye for now - is to stay in the moment.

That's all I can do.

Saying Goodbye is Hard

We're on day 7 in St. Thomas Hospital West.  My mom was moved to a private room on Monday, two days ago.  All of the days run together, it seems, when you spend so much time at a hospital.

My mom has been on comfort measures only since Saturday morning.  At the moment, she's sleeping peacefully and appears to be in no obvious pain or discomfort.  She gets restless every so often, which is hard for us to see, then settles down.

 I think my mom is near the end of her journey.

This is all so very personal.  I can't process much of it or write about it, at least not yet.  There will be time for that, I know.

Tracy and I are sitting with her now.  Tracy has spent the last two nights here with my mom.  Although she stole a couple of hours of sleep in the waiting room this morning, I'm afraid she's running on fumes.  She has an indomitable spirit, something she inherited from my mom, no doubt.

There is so much of my mom in Tracy.  The kindness, patience, gentleness and, yes, strength.  All of the characteristics that made my mom a great nurse, and mother, are the same ones that make Tracy a great mother and physical therapist.  I've been in awe just watching her.

Alice has been amazing, too.  She's devoted to my mom and that shines through in everything she says and does.  We couldn't have made it without her.  She's stayed a couple of nights with my mom, as well.

My cousin, David Clark, has been a godsend.  He's a physical therapist by training but got his PhD and teaches at Middle Tennessee State University.  He's been an objective voice for us and has, at times, been a liaison between the medical staff and our family.

Jan Baker, one of my mom's best friends, has been an angel.  She's been by her side, and our sides, for the past seven days.  I can never repay her for the love, friendship and support she has shown our family during our darkest hours.  We've laughed together, cried together and shared many, many stories.

I've prayed for an end to my mom's discomfort and pain and yes, her earthly life.  I've told my mom, in private conversations the past few days, that it's okay to let go.  I've told her we - and I - will be fine and that I will make it my mission to keep our family connected in the way that she would want us to stay connected.

I've shared moments with Tracy and Alice that I will never forget.   At times, we've sat together in silence, lost in our own thoughts and memories.  At other times, we've laughed and cried, as well.  We've held hands, and held my mom, and prayed out loud, too.  The point is, I think, that we've done it together, as a family.  Each of us handles grief differently because we're different people, but we're grieving together.

I believe my mom is hanging on because as part of her final act, she wants to do all she can to cement and strengthen our bonds as a family.  She wants to bring us together.  I believe that with all of my heart.

  

Standing Vigil

So much to say but no words to say it.

As I write this, it's Monday morning.  Tracy, Alice and I are with my mom in her room in the Neuro-ICU at St. Thomas West, where she has been since midday last Thursday.  Brian Crain is playing int the background on my cell phone.

My mom is not going to survive the massive brain bleed she had sometime late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning.  The three of us made the difficult decision yesterday morning to place her on comfort measures only.  She had an advanced directive and did not want extraordinary measures taken to unnecessarily prolong her life (feeding tube, ventilator, etc.).  We're honoring her wish and just trying to keep her comfortable at this point.  Alice had the nurse turned the monitor off last night.

Waiting.

That's all we can do and all we have been doing.

Mom occasionally opens up her eyes just a bit but doesn't focus on anything or anyone.  She's not tracking voices or movement.  She sleeps, mostly, and occasionally scratches her face.  We've taken turns holding her hand, always holding her left hand.  She alternately squeezes, then relaxes, her left hand as one of us holds it.  Her grip remains surprisingly strong.

Tracy and Alice have alternated staying overnight with her, as I've gone home to be with Jude and my boys.  I'm grateful to them for that.  My cousin, David Clark, has been here.  Jan Baker, one of my mom's best friends for years and years, has been a constant and reassuring presence.

I can't say enough about the staff at St. Thomas West, at least those we have been in regular contact with in the Neuro-ICU.  Patient, kind, respectful and understanding.  We've needed that, as a family.  Dr. Schmidt, the hospitalist, advised me that we will need to move to a private room upstairs today, since my mom is on comfort measures only.  I'd hoped we wouldn't have to leave this room until the end, but I understand.

My hope - and our hope - is that we don't have to move my mom out of the hospital at all and into a hospice situation, particularly with cold weather on the way.  I hate to think about bundling her up in an ambulance and driving back to NHC Place, which is where we would likely go if she continues to stay with us for more than few days.

I feel so strange, in a way, wanting my mom to die sooner rather than later.  But as I've tried to process what is happening over the last few days, I've come to realize it's not about me.  It's about her.  It's time for her to let go and leave us.  It just is.

All I want for her, now, is a peaceful and painless death.  That's what I pray for over and over during the day and night.

Peace for her.

I close friend of ours is a doctor and, in fact, delivered both our boys, sent me text today and I asked if I had any questions.  My reply?

Most of my questions at this point are existential ones.

And there will be time, lots of time, in the days to come for me to ponder and probably write about my ongoing struggle to answer the existential questions.

My mom so loved to read this blog.  As I've said before, for a long time, I was writing it for her.  Then, when she started to lose her memory and her health declined, I began to write about her any my struggle to find an answer to the "why" of it all.  

What I learned, I guess, is that there is no answer.  Sometimes things just are.

I'm rambling, I know, but my thoughts aren't particularly coherent or connected right now.  My mind is going in a million different directions, from distant and more recent memories to imagining a future without my mom.

Thank you for reading.  Thank you for the encouraging texts.  Thank you for replying to my posts on Instagram or Twitter.  Thank you for remembering my mom and my family during this difficult time.  The support we've received has been overwhelming and my heart is filled with gratitude for that.

As my wife, Jude, said earlier this week, "your mom is an extraordinary woman."

She certainly is.

I love you, mom.  

A Day I Hoped Would Never Come

This is the post I never wanted to write.

I'm exhausted and drained, mentally and emotionally, so this will be disjointed and rambling, for sure. I just want to get something down and start to process my thoughts.

Yesterday, I finished a mediation early and went to see my mom.  I rarely stop by her place late in the afternoon but I was planning on seeing the administrator to talk about staffing in the Courtyard at NHC Place and I wanted to see my mom.

When I got back to her place, she was sitting quietly at a table with another lady - not Carol, her normal companion.  I sat down beside her and she smiled at me.  She didn't talk but she was happy to see me, as she always is.  I think I held her hand for a minute or two and talked about my day.  I had a Texas Monthly magazine with me and I gave it to her to look through when it was time for me to leave.

In the scheme of things, it wasn't the longest of visits with my mom but as it turned out, it was one of the most important ones.

This morning, I took my truck in early to get the oil changed at the dealership, then drove to get coffee at Honest Coffee Roasters before starting a mediation at 9 a.m.  As I was sipping my coffee, Tracy texted me from Birmingham and asked me to call her immediately.  I did and she told me that Cathryn, the morning nurse at the Courtyard, had called her and that there was a problem with mom.  When they went to get her up, she was lethargic, not talking and couldn't seem to move her right arm or leg or feel anything on her right side.

I called Julie at my office, canceled the mediation and drove straight to NHC Place.  My mom didn't look good and she couldn't feel it when I pinched her right hand, arm or leg.  After meeting with a doctor and the head of nursing, we agreed to take my mom to the hospital in ambulance.  At the EMT's suggestion, we chose St. Thomas West, as opposed to Williamson Medical Center, because it is better equipped to treat stroke victims.

I called Alice - who was on the way to NHC Place - and she turned around and met the ambulance at the hospital.  I arrived shortly after she had been admitted and had undergone a CT scan.

The CT scan revealed a major brain bleed, or stroke, that had occurred in her brain sometime the night before.  She was fine when I left at 5 p.m. Wednesday night and, apparently, fine when the staff put her to bed around 9 p.m. or 10 p.m. Wednesday night.  So, while she was sleeping, she developed the brain bleed and it appeared to severely damage her neurological functioning, as the neurosurgeon advised Alice and me.

The hard part was learning that the only treatment option would be to drill a hole in my mom's skull and insert a drain to try to get rid of the fluid on the brain.  The down side of that procedure is that she would likely be in the hospital for one to two weeks and that ultimately she would probably need a feeding tube because she would be unable to swallow.  My mom has always been insistent that she didn't want extraordinary measure taken if her health declined precipitously and that she didn't want a feeding tube to prolong her life unnaturally.

So, here we are at the place where I never wanted to be.  My mom is in the ICU at St. Thomas Hospital and will probably live a few days at most.  She's comfortable or appears to be so.  She sleeping for the most part, although she occasionally opens her eyes a little bit.  Tracy - after she arrived from Birmingham - managed to coax an "almost smile" from her a couple of times.

I just left the hospital to come home for the night.  I'll relieve Tracy in the morning, as she's going to spend the night.  David Clark, Alice and Jerry Meyer are there now.

My world has tilted on its axis today and it will never rotate the same way again.

Saying Goodbye to an Old Friend

We're in Asheville, NC, this weekend, celebrating Jude's parents' 50th wedding anniversary with the family.  Will Miller, the son of a high school classmate of mine, is house sitting for us while we're away.

Yesterday, Will called me as we were walking in the rain through downtown Asheville and hesitatingly told me that our 19 year old cat, NC, had died.  It didn't come as a complete surprise because she's not been doing well but I hated that it happened when he was there and I wasn't.  Maybe it's for the best, though, because I would have hated for the boys to have found her before we did.

NC, short for "New Cat," has a long and storied history with our family.  It's sad because in some ways, she's the last link to our old house on Elliott Avenue and to a more innocent time in our lives before we had the boys and before my mom began to fade away.

When Jude and I bought the house on Elliott Avenue and she moved in, we immediately noticed a black and white cat in the window, outside, peering in at us.  It was cold, probably January 2002, and strangely enough, whichever room we were in, the cat appeared in the window.  From room to room.  We're in the den and there she is.  We're in the kitchen and there she is.  Weird.

I realized I had seen the cat when we were looking at the house, so we called our realtor to see if the owners had mistakenly left her when they moved.  He called them and, apparently, they lamely claimed to have tried to get her in the moving truck they rented.  In reality, Jesse and Amy Plaster left NC - they called her "Kroger," because that's where they found her, we later learned - and just like that, we had two cats, instead of one.  We later added a third cat, Mini-T, which is another story altogether.

I love animals, but I'm not particularly a cat guy.  I much prefer dogs.  The running joke I always told was that Jude loves cats and I love dogs, so when we got married, we compromised and got three cats.  That line was always a lot funnier to me than to Jude for some reason.

Now, with Jude's cat, Punk, long gone and NC gone, we're down to one cat.  And I'm a little bit sad about it.

Originally, NC was an outside cat to a great extent.  At our old house, she went outside in the small, fenced back yard and in the front yard, too.  She occasionally scrapped with other neighborhood cats who ventured into our yard.  Cats are territorial that way or so it seems.

In her prime, NC was a large cat.  Not fat, but really big but, for the most part, completely docile.  She didn't like to be picked up - like most cats - but she was a bit of a lap cat.  I've got pictures somewhere of she and Punk sitting on the blanket with Jude in her chair and a half at the old house, sleeping away.  My recollection is that NC and Punk tolerated each other and rarely squabbled but that's a long time ago.

NC was one of those cats who truly had nine lives or close to it.  Hers was an adventurous life in the early and middle years, much more sedentary the last few years.

At one point, she jumped or fell off the small, second floor front porch directly above our large, downstairs front porch.  She used to climb up on the rail and sleep on it.  One day when I was home and had the door open to second floor front porch, she walked out there.  A little while later, I noticed her outside on the downstairs front porch.  As I opened the front door, I realized she had fallen or jumped.  My suspicions were confirmed as she limped into the house.

Another time at the old house, I let her out at night because she was dying to go outside.  I don't really hearing anything but after a while, I saw her looking in the large oval glass of our front door.  She appeared to be bleeding for her nose and mouth.  When I let her in, I could see that she had gotten into a fight with something.  I took her up the Pet Emergency Clinic and they discovered a large gash on the upper roof of her mouth, severe enough the the veterinarian surmised she had scrapped with a raccoon or an opossum.  They stitched up the roof of her mouth.  For three weeks or so, I wrapped her in a bath town to prevent her from scratching me and fed her "kitty Ensure" by shooting a syringe of it into her mouth because she couldn't eat solid food.

Later still, she was out in the front yard and, unfortunately, wondered into the side yard, between our house and Jamie's house.  He dog - large and mean - began chasing her and when she jumped and tried to climb the fence into our back yard, she didn't quite make it.  She sled back down the fence and Jamie's dog attached her, biting her pretty significant on her back.  Again, off to the Pet Emergency Clinic we went for more stitches.  After that, NC pretty much stayed inside.

She moved with us to the new house and settled in nicely.  Although we had a bigger back yard than in the old house, NC rarely, if ever, ventured outside the check it out.  In fact, in the three or four years we have been there, I don't know if she ever left the back deck.

The last year or so, NC slowed down considerably.  She didn't do much more than eat and sleep.  Long gone were the early days in our old house when she drove Punk a bit crazy with her young cat playfulness.  Jude and I laughed when we remembered how she used to love to chase this feather attached by a piece of yarn to what was like a small fishing pole.  She would jump and jump, then grab it in her teeth before trying to walk away with it, only to be stopped when the yarn stretched all of the way out.

I bought NC a cat bed and placed in against the far wall in the guest room.  For quite a while, that was her spot and she slept there throughout the day.  At night, she often wandered into our room, so I placed an old family quilt on the floor, in the corner, by my side of the bed.  She slept there at night, often so soundly I could hear her snoring.  As I write this, I'm smiling, because I had almost forgotten about NC's snoring.  Some cats purr, and NC did that, but when she was in a deep sleep, she often snored, so loud that it would wake us up.

Another funny thing NC always did was to get her claws caught in carpet or blankets.  For some reason, she didn't have the ability to readily extricate herself and we had to help her.  

One of my favorite things - and it made Jude laugh, too - is that NC would talk to me.  If Jude and I were laying around in the day or night, watching television, for example, or reading, NC might walk up to see what was going on.  If I meowed at her, she would immediately mimic my meow and stare right back at me as she was doing it.  If I changed the pitch or tone, she would, too.  It was strange but funny.  Literally like she was talking to me or, perhaps, was puzzled why I couldn't understand her.

NC could be maddening at times, especially to me, as she struggled to use the litter box at times.  In the old house, we had three litter boxed, all of which I was somehow in charge of changing.  Still, she  consistently peed on the floor by the two litter boxes downstairs by the basement door.  I cleaned up the wood floor there a lot.

In the new house, especially the last year or so, NC couldn't or wouldn't climb into one of the two litter boxes in the laundry room.  She peed on the floor in there quite often, certainly more than I would have liked.  It used to make me angry, not at her but just at the indignity of my being the one to always have to clean it up.  However, as her health declined and I could see she was struggling, it became a kind of zen thing for me.  She couldn't help it because she was struggling to get around - maybe because of the jump or fall from the second floor porch of our old house - and the least I could do is to clean up after her willingly and a little bit lovingly.

NC lost the ability or maybe, desire, to give herself a bath and her coat became terribly matted.  Several months ago, when we took her for a checkup, the veterinarian she sees shaved her fur.  She looked weird, considerably smaller and kind of pitiful at first, but it seemed to bring her some relief.  Her fur actually grew back pretty quickly, though, and became matted again, although not as bad as its as before she was shaved.

The last couple of months, NC continued to decline.  She found a heating vent and laid directly on it most of the time, in bathroom or in the den.  At night, though, while Jude and I watched reruns of West Wing, she always walked over the couch where I lay, looked up at me, and meowed.  I brushed her or, more recently, just scratched her head and ears or rubbed her back.  While she didn't purr, she stayed there as along as I would continue and clearly enjoyed the attention.  It was our thing.  I knew we were near the end, but I felt like as long as she could still experience the pleasure of human contact, maybe we had a little more time.

Here's the hard part for me, I think, and part of how I made my peace with cleaning up after NC almost every day.  As strange as it is, her decline and her weakened state reminded me a lot of my mom, and her decline and weakened state.  There were definite parallels - for me, anyway - between the two.  Part of me felt that by respecting the circle of life and caring for NC with patience, kindness and well, love, I was doing what I hoped staffers are doing for my mom each and every day.  Maybe I thought it was a karma thing, that if I showed NC love and respect, staffers would do the same for my mom.

Weird, sure, but still.  It's how I felt.

As J.P. and Joe expressed to me, one independently from the other, it's going to be weird not having NC around.  Yes, boys, it sure is.

NC had a great run and lived a long, full life.  As I explained to the boys, when you lose a pet, it's best to focus on all of the good times you shared, because they vastly outnumber the tough times.  There's probably a metaphor for life in there somewhere or, more narrowly drawn, for relationships in life.

I also reminded the boys how fortunate NC was to have found her way to our family almost two decades ago.  We cared for her, we provided a roof over her head and food for her to eat and, most importantly, we loved her.

In the end, that's everything.

Toy Story

I have some favorite toys among the many J.P. and Joe have accumulated over last decade.  Occasionally, when they outgrow a toy that's one I love, I'll stash it on a shelf at the top of my closet.

Strange, right? 

With some toys, I can't bear to part with them.  Why?  I think it's because particular toys remind me of a time in our lives - in our boys' lives and, well, in our life as a family.  In my life, too. 

J.P. had a Teddy Bear that a co-worker of Jude's at Renewal House gave her at a baby shower just before he was born nearly 11 years ago.  It plays music or, if you punch a different button, makes the sound of a heartbeat or just white noise.  The idea being, of course, that you can place the Teddy Bear in a baby's crib, turn it on, and the baby will sleep. 

We never used the Teddy Bear that way.  However, I can recall - clear as day - coming home on evening in our old house, when J.P. was between an infant and a toddler, and walking upstairs.  It was quiet and as I got the top of the stairs, I looked to my left.  There, I saw Jude and J.P., sitting on the rug in the floor of "the nook."  Jude was playing with J.P. and the Teddy Bear was sitting next to them, playing music.

I can still hear the song as I sit here right now.  I'm not joking.  It was that kind of moment.  Powerful, beautiful and memorable, forever etched upon the hard drive that is my brain.  I have no idea why, but it is.

If I were to find the Teddy Bear - it's in a basket with other "lovies" in Joe's room - and play that song right now, it would be like climbing into a time machine.  I would instantly be transported back to the evening in our old house, to that place and time. I've done it and it's happened. 

Jude knows we can never part with that Teddy Bear.  It's link to time a time that's passed.  A simpler, more innocent time in many ways.  Well, in all ways.

What we have agreed to part with, however, is the Thomas the Train table.  We're giving it to Jude's brother and sister-in-law, James and Megan, and they're 4 and 2 year olds children, Caroline and James.

I can remember putting the Thomas the Train table together on Christmas Eve in 2010 when J.P. was almost 2 years old.  I can see myself - as I sit here, now, drinking a cup of coffee at Crema on a Saturday morning - sitting on the floor of our den in the old house, in front of the fireplace assembling the table.  Jude smiled bemusedly as I struggled a bit to line up the edges of the table and tighten the screws.

I felt fatherly in a way I hadn't felt before.  Assembling a toy - er, a table - late at night on Christmas Eve, so my son could see that Santa Claus had brought it to him when he got up the next morning.  It was an ebullient feeling to finish it, just knowing how excited J.P. would be the next morning when Jude brought him downstairs.  Sure enough, she did and he was.

When it was just the 3 of us in our little family, some afternoons at work I would walk over to the toy store on Main Street.  It's closed now, like so many of earlier merchants, a victim of rising rent.  It was an old school toy store that had been there for years.  I used to browse the Thomas the Train section and, often times, bring home to J.P. a new train.  Percy (my favorite), Diesel 10, the musical caboose (also my favorite).

A thought about the musical caboose.  J.P. used to insist in taking it with us when I took him for Saturday and Sunday afternoon neighborhood walks.  As I pushed the stroller up Acklen Street, headed to Bongo Java, then crossed 12th Avenue - way before 12South was a thing - J.P. pushed the button and played the caboose music over and over again before falling asleep for his afternoon nap.  If I pause for a moment, I can still see his looking up at me through he plastic window in the City Elite stroller's cover, smiling and holding the musical caboose, the music it played echoing in in my mind.

For a while the Thomas the Train table was upstairs, outside J.P.'s bedroom.  It was a tight fit, though - our old house was small.  Later, we moved it downstairs into what had been the office.  J.P. and Carley, our nanny, spent a lot of time playing with the trains on that table.  Building and rebuilding the tracks and driving the trains around the table.

By the time Joe was born, J.P. was almost 4.  In a short time, J.P. was moving out of the Thomas the Train phase in a Puff the Magic Dragon kind of way.  Growing older, into to different things.  Well, that was fine, because suddenly Joe was way into Thomas the Train, maybe even more so than J.P. had been.  And I loved every single minute of it.

The Thomas the Train table was great for a 2 year old because it's the perfect height for a toddler to hold onto it and, well, toddle around while playing with the trains.  That's part of the genius of the train table, I suppose.  Now, I hear young children have Lego tables.  It's just not the same thing.

Joe's love of Thomas the Train - born at that train table in our Elliott Avenue house - extended to books, television shows and movies.  At one point, I downloaded an entire album of Thomas the Train music on to my iPod (there's a blast from the past) and Carley used to play it for him in the kitchen, in the mornings, when she arrived to our house.

For a couple of years, we even went to see Thomas the Train and ride on him when he came to the Tennessee Central Railway Museum.  Joe was way, way into trains.

So, this week, I made the call I had been dreading.  I telephoned our handyman, R.J., and asked him if he could stop by and disassemble the Thomas the Train table that I so lovingly assembled a lifetime ago.  He agreed and, sure enough, the table is in pieced upstairs in the playroom just waiting to be boxed up.

And, in some ways, my heart is in pieces, too.

My boys are growing up.  Jude and I are growing older.  My mom is not really my mom, not the way she used to be.  My sister's daughter, Kaitlyn, is off to college.  In a year, Matthew will leave home for college, too.  And on and on it goes.

For sure, I take solace in knowing that our Thomas the Train table will be loved, again, by Caroline and, especially, James.  Watching them play with it when they visited us over the holidays made me happy.

So long, Thomas.

Two Small Ghosts of Christmas Past

New Year's Day.  2019.  I'm having a quick cup of coffee at Barista Parlor, just off Division Street, then heading down to visit my mom this morning.

Jude's brother, James, and his wife Megan visited us over the weekend with their two kids, Caroline and James.  Caroline is four and James is almost two years old.  For the first time, they stayed with us and it was an absolute blast.  Jude, the boys and loved having them stay with us.  We gave them the upstairs in our house so they had room to spread out, two bedrooms, my office for a little quiet time and their own bathroom.  It seemed to work out well.

Being around four and two year old kids for the first time in, well, forever, was an enlightening experience, to say the least.  It brought back so many happy memories of the times - not so long ago - when our J.P. and Joe were that age.  I was reminded - and I'd kind of forgotten, I think - of what a roller coaster ride it is to be the parents of young children.  Up's, down's, then do it all again with very little rest of down time.  It's intense, to be sure.

The pitter patter of little feet in the mornings.  Jude and I smiled in our bed downstairs, when we heard Caroline and James up and about in the mornings.  I used to love to hear J.P. jump out of bed upstairs in the old house, land with a thud and run across the hardwood floor to our bedroom.

A lot of tears and a lot of laughter.  Fortunately, the tears normally don't last very long.  A thunderstorm blow through, there are tears, then the thunderstorm is over almost as quickly as it started and you move on to something else.

Tag team eating.  It was funny watching James and Megan take turns eating a meal, especially when we were out at a restaurant.  One ate while one entertained James.  At almost two years of age, he doesn't like to sit still in a high chair for very long, especially if the food hasn't arrived.  While we were eating lunch Sunday at Mafiozza's, I lifted him our his high chair when he was fussing and we explored the restaurant.  Memories of similar experiences with J.P. first, then later with Joe, came flooding back.  There something special - something that's easy to take for granted - about having a child young and small enough to be able to pick him and carry him around for a few minutes.

Laughter.  There is no better sound it the world than a toddler's laughter.  It's not even close.  So innocent.  So happy.  It's perfection.  At Mafiozza's, I played a game where James and I fist bumped and after, I exploded my hand above his head and ran my fingers through his hair.  I used to do that with Joe, a lifetime ago.  Joe always laughed and James did, too.  Again and again and again.  When I acted like I was going to grab Caroline, she ran by me, laughing the laugh of a four year old.  It's the best.

Nap time.  Stealing an hour or two of down time.  So precious and so needed to recharge the batteries.

The early mornings.  5 or 5:30 a.m., 6:00 a.m. if you're lucky.  Wow.  I don't miss that.

The Pack & Play, where James slept at our house.  When Jude's parents dropped it off, I was stunned.  I hadn't ween our Pack & Play in years.  Our boys slept in it, on the road, in many, many places.  Cabins, hotel rooms and houses on the beach.  Jude and I - well, mostly Jude, became an expert at assembling it in five to ten minutes.

Then orange and yellow portable high chair seat that attached to a chair.  Again, I hadn't seen it in years.  We ate so many meals at so many restaurant in so many places with J.P. or Joe sitting in that seat after I lugged it in and clipped it to a chair at our table.

I could go on an on.  The only thing better would have been if I had gotten my stroller out - the venerable City Elite by Baby Jogger - and taken James or Caroline for a walk in the neighborhood.  Probably a little rainy for that, but maybe next time.

What a great visit.