I looked at the clock...4 AM. Why was I awake? Casey didn't jump on me.  Maybe the clock bonging on the hour? I feel like I'm sleeping under Big Ben in this smaller house. I hadn't had a nightmare since the night Michelle Bachman announced she was running for president, but there I was...wide awake.  The body wanted to go back to sleep but the mind wanted to run laps around my memory bank.

As I age, I marvel at the brain's ability to retain and bring to the surface (at odd hours) long-forgotten people, places and events.  I remember  the evening my 3-year old daughter, dismayed at her newborn brother's reluctance to tell her "good night", asked if he didn't have batteries yet. There were the trips to the ER with her because she drank "icky water" (lighter fluid we thought but never knew for sure). She fell on a carpeted stair step and opened a small but bloody cut in her eyebrow that required stitches. There was the time she dropped a glass insulator (Don't ask!) and a piece of it bounced up and gashed her leg. That was a fun trip in the ambulance and more stitches. And there was the afernoon I'll never forget at the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium when the same little girl, a bit older, stood on her seat and yelled louder than anybody around us when Frank Robinson (I think it was Frank.) hit a home run.  I'm sure she'll remember who hit it if I'm wrong. You know the wonderful thing...she hasn't changed. She grew into a wonderful person who still  has the exuberance to drown out everyone around her at swim meets, baseball games and any time Peyton Manning throws a TD pass. She still makes occasional trips to the ER. That's was loving and caring mothers do. She's a wonderful person who enjoys life, a very loving and proud mother, and I love her very much.

So now I will wait to see what my mind comes up with the next time I wake up at 4 AM. If Sarah Palin wakes me up, it won't be pretty.  You accumulate a lot of useless stuff over the years - I've got way too many pairs of socks for a retiree living in Florida - but we also store a lot of wonderful memories in the far reaches of our mind.  It's fun to wander back there once in awhile and pull them out.