Along with the joys of motherhood comes a side effect that all moms recognize - the death of brain cells.

It begins with pregnancy. Doctors say memory loss is caused by fluctuating hormones, but I say it is your child already exerting its power over its mom.

It only gets worse when the baby comes. Sleep deprivation and those dreaded hormones wreak havoc on whatever brain cells are still functioning. And if you are juggling more than one child, well, those brain cells don’t stand a chance.

As your child grows, slowly the brain begins to heal. That is, until the teenage years, especially if your child is female. You come to believe that you know or understand absolutely nothing. The shock of a once-loving child suddenly transforming into a raging bundle of - yep, you guessed it - hormones is enough to severely reduce a mother’s IQ.

But things do tend to settle down. Children grow up and move out, forging lives of their own. But by then, age has crept up on you. Those gloriously reclaimed brain cells decide to go AWOL again. I could say it’s hormones again (hey, it’s a convenient excuse), but I think it’s just that we are trying to store way too much information in our memory banks. One of my favorite error messages from an early computer system perfectly captures this phenomenon - input overload, retry later.

For a few days last month, my brain totally fritzed. It was the day before my daughter’s wedding, and all the tiny, last-minute details were coming together - or not. I lost my car keys three times, and completely forgot to pack the imprinted napkins and champagne flutes to take to the reception. And for two days after the wedding, I swear my mental capacity was down to almost zero.

Slowly, things are returning to normal. But if I have talked to you in the last month, and I either forgot that we had spoken or completely confused dates or information, please forgive me. I’m not stupid. I just need to be re-booted.

Wandering children

As I was remembering life as a young mother, I was suddenly reminded of one of many events from my childhood that would have qualified my mother for sainthood.

There are four Durrence kids in my family - and my poor mother had all four of us in five years. Can you imagine the chaos? We were a handful in the best of circumstances. Not that we were bad - we were just smart, energetic kids with vivid imaginations.

One particular memory makes me laugh - and groan, to think of the anguish we must have caused Mom. We grew up in a small neighborhood that backed up to an expansive pine forest spotted with swampy areas. We loved to go “tromping” through the woods, and my folks didn’t mind. They often went with us, and taught us how to be safe and what areas to avoid. But in reality, I think they didn’t mind because it got us out of the house.

One summer day, we decided to go tromping. Being kids, we didn’t think to tell anyone. We just headed out on our adventure. We had a great time, especially when we discovered a small creek we didn’t know existed.

Finally, as the daylight began to fade, we headed home. As we neared our house, we could hear sirens. And then we saw several fire trucks and police cars in front of the house. More curious than scared, we ran the rest of the way home.

Suddenly we heard our mother scream. The sound jerked us all to a halt, our eyes the size of Kennedy half dollars. I’ll never forget the sight of my hysterical mother running toward us with her arms outstretched.

Long story short, we had been gone much longer than we thought, and my mother was convinced we were either horribly lost in the woods or that someone had been injured. The police department and fire department had been called to begin a search.

We were suitably chastened and chastised, promising NEVER to leave again before telling Mom or Dad where we were going and when we’d be back. And we never did, but we had plenty of other opportunities to scare the bejeezus out of my mom - like the time she looked out the window and saw my usually passive brother Cliff chasing the little boy from next door - with an ax.

But that is a story for another time.

Readers may contact Debby Durrence at ddurrence@lagrangenews.com