A Certain Unrelenting Optimism

Photo by alan cleaver

Crossword puzzles remind me of my mom in happier days before her struggle with Parkinson's disease and her descent into confusion.  I remember, too, the laughter that punctuated that long slide.  Laughter marking battles won even as we lost the war.  Comic relief.  Tender humor.  Alternative to tears.
Not that Mom ever had much time for crossword puzzles with a husband and 13 children to care for.  During a very lean time in our family's life,  the Des Moines Register published "Prizeword Pete."  By solving a seemingly simple puzzle, you could get a lot of money.  Enough money, it seemed to me, to solve all our problems.
"Look at this," she said to me, holding out the Sunday paper page.  We pored over it together, then, certain that we had it right, we sent it to the paper.  What a week that was!  Would the good news come by phone or mail?  Be announced in the next Sunday's paper?
The puzzle was a trick, the clues red herrings.  Nobody won.  Mom was undaunted.  "Look, there's a new puzzle.  We can try again."
The experience cultivated the crossword puzzle gene in me--and a certain, unrelenting optimism.  Mom's experience in her later years has cultivated my interest in brain function.