When my daughter asked for help getting two Christmas casseroles out of the oven, I was more than happy to assist. She had the baby strapped to the front of her, after all. I stood in front of the oven for a moment, looking to either side for something to use in handling the hot dishes.<\/p>\n
\u201cUse your words, Mom,\u201d Jen said, as she removed two potholders from a hook above the stove and handed them to me.<\/p>\n
\u201cThanks,\u201d I said, grateful for her help, but a bit surprised that she would give her mother the same instruction she might give her two-year-old son.<\/p>\n
It was some time later that the word, potholder<\/em>, came to me, a word I\u2019ve known for well over half a century. On that particular day, though, this sixty-two-year-old couldn\u2019t use her words because, unlike the two-year-old who was learning new words, I was simply trying to remember the ones I\u2019ve forgotten.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When my daughter asked for help getting two Christmas casseroles out of the oven, I was more than happy to assist. She had the baby strapped to the front of her, after all. I stood in front of the oven for a moment, looking to either side for something to use in handling the hot […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-409","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=409"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":410,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409\/revisions\/410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=409"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=409"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=409"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}