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"Mimi, was it a cat?" Grace, 7, asks my mother, who's trying to describe the animal she just saw run across our back fence.
"No, no, Honey, it was a ..." and my mom's voice trails off in puzzlement.
"A bird!" Grace chimes in enthusiastically.
"No, it wasn't a bird," my mom answers, her forehead pursed in thought as I see her struggle to name something so simple that's so simply eluded her.
"Squirrel, Mimi? Was it a squirrel?" Grace says and I see my mom's face flood with relief.
"Yes, yes, it was a squirrel," she says smiling.
"Aww, Mimi, I missed it. Was it really cute?" Grace asks.
"Very," Mimi replies and goes on to describe its tail, how it must have been a baby because it wasn't too fluffy and was a little wobbly as it jumped to the grass. I'm lulled and comforted by the cadence of their squirrel tail conversation, relishing the simple victory that my mother just experienced thanks to Grace.
By delivering the word, Grace spared my mother an adult interruption, dispensing with the need for her daughter's rescue -- aid that she would have appreciated but would have also been embarrassed by.
My mother has Alzheimer's disease -- and with the having ironically comes a seemingly endless string of losses: loss of words, loss of memories, loss of recognition and worst of all, a loss of independence. Of all my mother's attributes, independence has always been the most fiercely and defensively guarded.
"Mama, what's that brown bird called that we saw the other day?" Grace asks, pulling me from my thoughts. I'm struck by how profoundly unchildlike her question seems, with its perfect timing and uncanny delivery. But at 7, she is incapable of contrivance, which makes her innocent query all the more profound in its reassurance to her grandmother, and to me, that everyone needs help remembering things now and then.
"Road runner," I say and I smile as they carry on their suburban wildlife conversation while I struggle to fight the tears welling up in my eyes.
At bedtime, Grace delivers another innocent question that's harder to answer, "Mama, is Mimi crazy?"
I push down a knee-jerk urge to reprimand her for using such an unkind word. Instead I ask what she means by "crazy."
"Well, she says things that don't make sense sometimes. And she asks me the same question over and over but I can tell it's not a joke," she replies.
We talked about Alzheimer's with Grace when my mother was first diagnosed so I remind her of the "disease that affects Mimi's brain" and how it's easy for her to be confused -- but how that's different than crazy.
After Grace is sleeping, I go downstairs and look up "crazy" in the dictionary. Webster's New World defines it as "unsound of mind; insane; foolish; not sensible" and I feel like crying again until I'm reminded of a children's book that my librarian friend recommended. I go online and order Wilfrid Gordon McDonald Partridge by Mem Fox and Julie Vivas.
When it arrives, I'm buoyed by this book about a boy named Wilfrid who lives next door to a retirement home. Hearing that his favorite resident has lost her memory, the boy asks the old folks what a memory is: "Something from long ago"; "Something that makes you laugh;" "Something warm;" Wilfrid ponders the answers, then gathers up memories of his own -- seashells collected last summer, a feathered puppet, a warm egg fresh from the hen -- to give her. In handling Wilfrid's memories, Nancy reclaims and shares some of her own.
The other day I hear Grace and my mom talking again.
"Mimi, see this picture of Chester? It was my mom and dad's dog before I was born but I sometimes think I remember him," she says, showing my mother some pictures in an old album.
"That's OK," my mother says. "Memories are funny like that."
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