He thinks we are in Hawaii as he runs down the hall to find our room. We aren’t. A much more domestic stop is on our itinerary for this attempt at escape—Huntington Beach. 

To be fair, if I use my three-year-old goggles and imagine our last-best vacation, there are a lot of similarities. A long hall with many doors. A beach just beyond. Collective family excitement.  

He runs exactly to the would-be-Hawaii door and against odds, it is the correct door for this stay. I wonder at the chance of this. And then I wonder at watching children grow. 

I don’t know for sure but I’m starting to suspect it’s much like caring for someone with dementia. Never sure what they will remember. Always amazed at the things they do. Saddened when something that feels so vivid is forgotten. 

I was crushed the first time my oldest couldn’t remember the silly finger dance he did when he thought something I gave him to eat was especially good. 

The mind must leave a pyramid graph in its wake when describing its usefulness in things remembered. So as my son remembers Hawaii and the exact walk to our past-vacation-room I stop myself from attempting to force him to hold this memory close. If I reference it daily will it last forever? Or will it become just another photograph in his mind? My words, finding home in his head, creating a no-longer-memory but an education of what was.

I sigh and realize the weight of the child historian that I have become. I stretch the muscles of my mind and worry I may have already forgotten too much, not realizing the significant position of memory keeper that was handed to me the second he took his first breath.