One sunny afternoon as I watched my father and my oldest son poking around in the backyard, I was struck by how engaged and comfortable they were together. To this day I have no idea what had caught their attention. A wiggly worm? A shiny stone? It didn't matter. I could see that they were connected and happy to enjoy the autumn day. My own feelings toward my father had become a confusing stew--heartbreak, anger, frustration, and fear, all tempered by abiding love--but my wise young son was content to simply love his grandpa and bask in his good company.
While my son and my father were so clearly "in the moment," my own "grasshopper mind" was hopping ahead. I imagined the two of them wobbling on a seesaw--and I understood that before long they would, in a sense, trade places: my father sliding into a second infancy of sorts while my son soared, his mind brighter and his body bigger, stronger with each passing day. The image of my father and my son crisscrossing in the cosmos was the source of both deep sorrow and profound solace for me--and many years later, it flickered to life again as the inspiration for Little Mama Forgets.
Over the years I explored the idea of a child and a grown-up crisscrossing, both physically and mentally, as the conceit for any number of bad poems and half-baked stories. It wasn't until I began to think of the idea as a children's book that the story truly took hold. As I started to write, I knew that I wanted to "move in" with a close-knit family in an urban setting. An early draft introduced an Irish grandpappy and his sweet grandson in New York. Another version centered on an Italian nonna and her dear granddaughter in Boston's North End. Although those two scenarios are truer to aspects of my own life, it wasn't until I opened my eyes and tapped into my grown-up life in Southern California--and the ways it's enriched by the proximity of Mexico--that my story started to bloom.
I never intended to write a book about Alzheimer's; instead, I wanted to explore the ties between generations within a family, and the loving give-and-take between a child and an adult as they navigate together in the world. How fortunate for Lucy and Little Mama and me that Melanie Kroupa, my editor at Farrar, Straus and Giroux, saw something worthy and uplifting in Little Mama Forgets--and that she had the inspired vision to enlist Stacey Dressen-McQueen to illustrate my first picture book. The colors, the textures, the energy throughout--with Stacey's artwork, each page is a joyous celebration of Latino family life. It is the joy in the story, rather than some sadness, that I hope children and their parents and grandparents and teachers will embrace.
Family life--with all its bumps and mysteries--friends, books, and writing are among my greatest joys. I learned firsthand from my parents that diversity--with its smorgasbord of languages, literature, religions, art, traditions, intimate rituals, and of course, food!--is an extraordinary gift that enriches all our lives. Although my mother and father aren't here to turn the pages of Little Mama Forgets with their grandchildren and great-grandchildren, they are alive in my heart as Lucy and Little Mama find their way into the world.
THE STORY BEHIND LITTLE MAMA FORGETS
The seed for Little Mama Forgets was planted in my heart nearly twenty years ago. My parents had made the long trip from the East Coast to visit my blossoming family in Denver, and the reunion was bittersweet, as my beloved father was in the stranglehold of Alzheimer's disease. He was still very much himself in spirit, and yet because geography and the tugs of our lives separated my parents and me for long stretches, I was acutely aware of the changes in my father--and of the disease that was ravaging him while consuming my mother.
