Watch what you say, someone might be listening.

Today is a day for memories. Painful memories. Complicated memories. Thoughts of death, life, destruction, envy, hate, valor, and hope. The best of human emotion. The worst of human emotion. The understanding that we as humans are capable of so much…so much goodness and light, so much evil and dark. And, so much mediocrity.

My son has trouble with memories and emotions. Communicating them. Answering questions about them. If he can’t tell me what he did today, is that because he remembers, but can’t say? Or that he doesn’t remember at all? I turn this over in my mind, again and again. The expression on his face leaves me wondering. He looks as if he is trying to remember. He seems to be as perplexed as I am that these things are hard for him.

He’s slowly making progress with his memory. At once, he has a terrible memory and a wonderful memory. Terrible, in that he struggles to tell me what he did that day or who he saw, no matter how unusual (or usual) the event. Wonderful, in that he now talks about events that occurred when he was three or four, events and people that I never realized he was even cognizant of. It makes me stop and think about the things I’ve said when he was so disengaged. Things I would never have talked about in front of my typical child. Has he been listening all along?