In Jennifer Trimmings's memoir, she remembers the past for the present while helping her mother through the challenges of Alzheimer's. During her quest, Trimmings finds solace and forgiveness.

They flow like water--the memories.

Though Mom's are disappearing like thin air that isn't thin anymore as the heaviness of what is real hangs over me, on me. The Alzheimer's might be hers, but I'm breathing it too. Haunted, I remember our shared history as if for her, seeking nothing and everything as though I can make things better. Forgiveness?

Mom raised me to do the right thing. "Jennifer, the inside must be as good as the outside," she'd say while teaching me how to sew. Yet now, she's effing this and effing that when things don't go her way. And Nana always said, "I want nourishment, not punishment." But she also quipped, "Spread your legs and think of England." At forty-one, I've learnt in college that as a historian, I can only tell events as they were or are. Therefore, at times, things aren't going anybody's effing way.