A Lurking Memory

The other day I was walking in the woods and saw a pair of adult turkeys staring out at me from behind a tree, through the brush. I shot a photo of them, and put it on Facebook, captioned "Turkey Lurkey." Turkeys lurking, get it? Anyway, I thought it kind of clever.

The phrase kept running through my mind, and I gradually recalled where I'd heard it. In the kids' story about Chicken Little, who had convinced herself the sky was falling, and ran through the farmyard telling all the animals, including Turkey Lurkey and Loosey Goosey and such. From that I remembered how much I had loved that story as a very young child and vaguely recalled the warm feeling I had when my mother read me the story.

Fortunately, my mother is still alive, at 96, and I called her to share the memory.

At first she didn't recognize the story. But as we talked, she did, and described the book the story was in and how I had memorized most of the stories, which she would read me every night, and how I would never let her skip or change a word. I was the first, and at that time the only, child. Because my brother came when I was three, and we moved from there when I was three, I know that memory came from that age.

Those were the days before most people had TV, and, living out in the boonies of western Nebraska, there were no TV signals anyway. Dad had a sales route that kept him away from home most weeks, Monday through Friday. Mom and dad's hometown of Omaha, and all family, were 500 miles away and long distance phone calls were costly.

"So," my mother said, "it was just you and me in the evenings, with nothing to do but read." From there she began describing her sitting beside the borrowed crib I was in (in those days before the recall police people passed such things down), how it came with an accompanying toy chest, both of which were painted a pale green. Suddenly I saw those pieces of furniture as though they were in the room before me, and felt her nearby assuring presence.

We talked for a good twenty minutes, sharing our versions of those evenings. And without realizing it until later, I found myself with a strong sense of closure. How wonderful to bookend our lives together, with stories of how we found comfort with one another during those long evenings, and for just a few moments I felt once more the wondrous warmth of a new mother's love.