On one of our favorite days—when shiny happy people gather in rainbow colors, waving flags in support of loved ones who deserve more pride and less shame for living authentically in a harsh world—we made a joyful detour to the airport and brought our baby home for the summer! Huck is now halfway through college and enjoyed sleeping in every morning and doing math research every afternoon with a favorite professor these last seven weeks. Please don’t ask me what math research means; I don’t know! When I last requested details he asked, “Do you want the actual answer or more of a theatre analogy?” Analogy please, I said timidly. So basically they succeeded in doing a scene from an impossible play and then concluded their time together by experimenting with the entire complicated script. But with math.

As the temperatures rise and the thunderstorms and tornado watches seem to have finally ended (though it is raining as I write this), Troy and I have kicked off our seventh annual summer break with patio sitting, flower admiring, and dog cuddling. Franny survived her four month heartworm treatment and life is back to normal while we wait for her official diagnosis in November. We call Franny and Zuzu The Wonder Twins, as they regularly strike the very same pose while sleeping, squirrel hunting, or just being cute. We’ve got a new fence and new patio furniture that thankfully came with rain covers, which we’ve gotten very good at taking on and off, on and off, on and off. We began the summer with a fun-filled visit from our favorite Texas Gregs, then spent a week in Kansas and Colorado where we celebrated our dad’s 84th birthday with Jeni and Nathan to ignite those long term memories.

Some silver linings of Alzheimer’s: the ability to make a person happy and surprised merely by your presence over and over and over and over again AND the constant reminder of what it’s like to live fully in the present moment. If only we could master these skills without losing all of our short-term memory and life as we knew it.

While in Wichita we celebrated our other Wonder Twins, Jackson and Rylee, turning 15 with Troy’s family and spent some time with my mom who is now on Hospice care due to a collapsed lung and very frail body. She’s on oxygen and receives regular visits from nurses who pamper her with their tender loving care, and we’re told she may live like this for quite a while. She loved the North Pole t-shirt our dad brought back to her, a place they first visited on their honeymoon and would later bring their daughters and eventually grandchildren.

Meanwhile we’re watching a beautiful, epic Korean story on Netflix called “When Life Gives you Tangerines,” and each episode is a tender (and often funny) work of art. When the protagonists’ first baby is born, they call her their Eternal Nostalgia. As ours unpacks and makes himself back at home for the next two months, like Emily from Our Town I want to whisper to him to enjoy his parents’ youth, energy, and cognitive abilities, even though he’s probably taking note of our gray hairs, crows feet, and the chorus of “ows” when we get up from a resting position.

“Oh, earth, you’re too wonderful for anybody to realize you. Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it — every, every minute?” (Thornton Wilder)