We had been with my daughter and her family for three weeks, helping them through the adjustment of adding newborn Caleb to their existing children, two-year-old Josiah and three-year-old Hannah. In addition, we had spent several days packing and hauling boxes as they moved to Missoula, Montana, from Seeley Lake, about an hour away.<\/p>\n
We were exhausted as we began our drive back to the Seeley Lake house, the car quiet now that the young family was settled enough in Missoula to spend a first night in their new place. I offered to drive.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, thanks,\u201d said George. \u201cI need to drive for a while to decompose.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cUmm\u2026decompress?\u201d<\/p>\n
He thought for a moment. \u201cWhat is it you do when you die?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cDecompose,\u201d I said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI meant the other word, but maybe decompose is more like it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s said that when children are born, they come out with a third of their mother\u2019s brain clutched in their tiny hands. There\u2019s no doubt I lost some chunks of gray matter at the births of my children. Apparently, the brains of grandparents are also at risk, simply by spending time with the little people. So, yes, decompose<\/em> is the word.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We had been with my daughter and her family for three weeks, helping them through the adjustment of adding newborn Caleb to their existing children, two-year-old Josiah and three-year-old Hannah. In addition, we had spent several days packing and hauling boxes as they moved to Missoula, Montana, from Seeley Lake, about an hour away. We […]<\/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-424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424","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=424"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":425,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/424\/revisions\/425"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=424"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=424"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldkaren.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=424"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}