Monday Memories – It Hurts Your Mouth

You know how you just get some images burned in your brain and they make you laugh every time your memory scans across one?  One of those images is watching Grace laugh.  She goes completely silent and can’t talk or even make a noise, her eyes fill with tears, and her shoulders, straight back, go up and down.  I love that image.  The other night when we went out to supper she got to laughing like that.  She had asked me to repeat the story of when Abe was three and in the church nursery.  I don’t know why she thinks it’s funny.

Ty - nearly 1
Cali - nearly 4
Abe - freshly 2
I love being their mom.

We were country folk.  We had left the ranch and had temporarily moved closer to town.  Instead of being in a country ward for church, we were now in a city ward.  It was our first Sunday in our new ward.  I was nervous and hoped the kids would be on their best behavior, especially fitting for a new ward – a city ward where little boys did not wear cowboy boots to church.  Cali was five.  Abe was three.  Ty was two.  Ande was going to be born any day.  That first Sunday Cali went to her primary class and Abe and Ty went to the nursery.  I was in the restroom in between classes when in came Leila Schroeder herding all the little potty-trained nursery kids.  She saw me and came over and said laughingly, “Remind me to tell you sometime what Abe said in nursery.”

I panicked.  Abe had been talking in sentences since he was fifteen months old.  The day I brought Ty home from the hospital he said, “Drink milk, please.”  Now that he was three he had lots of words in his vocabulary that he knew how to string together into sentences.  Who knew what family secrets he’d told Leila.  Eight months earlier he told the nursery I was going to have a baby and we hadn’t told anyone yet, let alone Abe.  The ward knew before Calvin’s folks. 

I told Leila, “Oh, please, tell me now!” 

She smiled, looked at the little kids, and whispered, “I’ll tell you later.”

I replied, “You might forget.”

She said, “Oh….I won’t forget.”

I begged, “Please tell me.”

I imagine she could see the worry and didn’t want to be the one to send me into labor because that might mean she might be babysitting all afternoon, too.  She was one of our closest neighbors.  She left her little herd and came over close.  “Well.  We were sitting at the little table in the classroom.  All the kids were quietly coloring their pictures of Jesus when out of the blue Abe said, ‘Sisser Schroeder, damnit is a bad word.’”

Leila’s eyes got big at this point of the story and she said, “I looked around to see if any of the other little kids were listening to him.  They were busy coloring their pictures, so I quietly said back to him, ‘Why yes.  Yes, it is a bad word, Abe.’"

She continued, “Abe kept coloring and without breaking a stroke he said, ‘And sh*t’s even worse.’"

She said, “I looked at the door to see if any parents were coming in.  I was afraid of what word he was going to say next.  He still kept coloring and then said, ‘It hurts your mouth when you say those words.’

“I said, ‘Yes it does.  Heavenly Father doesn’t like us to use those words and it hurts our mouth when we say them.

“Abe said, ‘Nope.  That’s not why.  It hurts because your mom washes your mouth out with soap when you say them.’”

Leila finished, “And that is when I thought it would be a nice time to take everybody to the bathroom.”

Oh gee.  I can remember that conversation like it was yesterday.  I was wearing that black polka dotted maternity dress.  I did not teach Abe either of those words.  Mr. Rogers and Sesame Street did not teach Abe those words.  Ty and Cali did not teach Abe those words.  That leaves only one person who could have taught Abe those words.

Someday when Grace and Abe have a little Abe that talks in sentences in nursery, I’ll think this story is very funny.  Until then, thinking of Grace laughing while I tell it is what makes me laugh.