Dana (on phone with mom): Mom, I’m using a word in my text about The Mother Project that I’m not comfortable with, but I’m told most people understand it, and it would help them if I use it to describe your experience.

Mom: What’s the word?
Dana: Dementia.
Mom: Oh… Why not just say I’m kookoo… everybody in my family was kookoo.

Kregg, my brother, gets on the line.
Kregg: Kookoo is the new black.
Mom: And who are you again?

Welcome to The Mother Project, a collaboration of art making in progress. This is a personal journey, seen through my eyes and the stories of others, as my family cares for our 88 year old mother, Bev Mattson, and her experience of dementia/memory loss. This project is about aging, family, memory, imagination & storytelling… which I guess includes life, death & taxes… Humor is a big deal here. The older mom gets the more her wisdom frees up to join her humor and the combination is a wacky healing balm.Mom: Where do I live?
Dana: You live in Gig Harbor.
Mom: I live in Gig Harbor?
Dana: Yes.
Mom: I think I live in the moment.

Art making is a big deal too. We are a family of artists, which might explain our particular take on mom’s process as being one of something lost and something found. So voice recordings, music, journal entries, dreams, photos and paintings will show up here from time to time surfacing from the lost and found of one family’s creative hard work.