“The Muppet Show” was appointment television at my house growing up. I don’t know what night or what time, but I remember we were always there, in the living room, watching Kermit, the gang, and the very special guest. My favorite episode was Crystal Gayle in that weird ghost ship number toward the end of the show. Such long, luxurious hair! [My father liked us to have long hair. I cut it myself in first grade but from grades three to six I had long, if not luxurious, hair.]

“We Must Believe in Magic”

I had a plush Kermit doll in his full reporter regalia, such as he wears in my hands-down favorite Muppet movie, The Great Muppet Caper. Possibly that movie started my long career as an anglophile. I don’t have that doll anymore, but wish I did. Mr. gave me a porcelain Kermit in tux and tails a few years ago for Christmas, and it’s on a shelf above my bed. The limited series of Muppet stamps that my older sister gave me are framed on a display shelf in the dining room. I blogged for six years as Kermit.

I was devastated when Jim Henson died. I can’t explain it any better than that. That he could die, or would die, was not on my radar. He was my quiet, creative hero, the voice and hands of most of my favorite Muppets, a contributor to my beloved “Sesame Street” (“We All Live in a Capital I“). I didn’t watch a new Muppet movie for years after that, because it wasn’t Jim voicing Kermit anymore. I have never seen the pirate Muppet movie, nor seen more than a little of the space one (come ON, Gonzo is NOT an alien). I have seen “A Muppet Christmas Carol,” which is lovely, and my whole family was disgusted at what Disney did to the Muppets in the “Wizard of Oz,” so we turned it off within the first 15 minutes. Seriously, ICK. Jim said this about his creations:

As I try to zero in on what’s important for the Muppets, I think it’s a sense of innocence, naiveté — you know, the experience of a simple person meeting life. Even the most worldly of our characters is innocent. Our villains are innocent, really. And it’s that innocence that I think is the connection to the audience.

The Oz attempt really stepped away from that philosophy. Think of how goofy Doc Hopper and Professor Max Krassman are in The Muppet Movie, as well as the quad of villainous fashion industry stars from Caper. And the scenes with John Cleese as Highbrow Street homeowner Neville, married to Dorcas, are some of my favorite all-time movie scenes.

So. Disney released a new Muppet movie in 2011, and I read many, many reviews before I screwed my courage to the sticking place and brought the family to the movies at Christmastime. There’s been a revival of movies based on shows from my childhood, and I’ve avoided them because they damage the good feelings I had for how those shows fit into my life narrative. The Muppets meant more to me than the others, so my apprehension was at least tripled.

Between H. and F. needing their potty breaks, I missed a few scenes here and there, and then E. needed to nurse. So I was pretty distracted while I watched, but enjoying myself. Jim Parsons as Human Walter was amusing, as was that sequence, “Man or Muppet?”

Suddenly Kermit was on stage on a log with a banjo, strummy-la-la-ing (bonus points if you know THAT obscure reference) the opening chords of “Rainbow Connection.” I was caught so off guard, my attention so divided, that I had no defenses.

I cried. It was a lovely cry.

I cried for me, for Jim, for Kermit. Sad tears for that trio. I cried for my kids, for me now, for Kermit now. Happy tears for that bunch.

Years ago now I went with my father and my sisters to see the first Chronicles of Narnia movie. I cried once towards the end. By then I certainly had one son, perhaps two. (Too lazy to look at release date!) I tried to explain to my father how Peter’s hands, on his sword in a battle scene, made me cry. The actor was on the cusp: nearly a man, but still, really, a boy. Yet his hands were older than his face. His hands were on the brink of being a man’s hands. Yet Peter was too young to be leading an army in a brutal battle. I think mothers cry for all those boys throughout history.

My tears for Jim, for me, for Kermit, were in the same vein. I don’t have the right words to make everyone understand the tears. My father didn’t understand why I cried over Peter’s hands. My son’s hands are nearly twelve and they are becoming long and strong and I can see the print of the man emerging. I will cry over his hands someday, silly sentimental Muppet-loving mother that I am.

Boy, did that take a turn, or what?

I remember Jim. I search, occasionally, for this issue of LIFE magazine, for I would like it, carefully preserved and hanging on my wall:

It’s always out of stock.

I’d like to remember Jim this way, to live truly to these words. Because, if I’m honest, what my kids will remember is not yet what is best. And these words are true, at least about the way I remember my parents:

The attitude you have as a parent is what your kids will learn from more than what you tell them. They don’t remember what you try to teach them.

They remember what you are.

In October 1997, I was in a serious car accident on Route 9 between Tarrytown and Ossining, NY. Coming around a blind curve with insufficient signage or manpower to warn drivers, a construction crew was backing a truck into the road during rush-hour traffic. I managed to stop about an inch short of the car in front of me and breathed a sigh of relief. Looking over at the nearest construction worker, I puzzled at the distressed look on his face. That’s the last thing I remember until I woke up a few minutes later with my car totaled and my knee buried in the dashboard, my back and neck and head fuzzy and sore. The cars behind me didn’t stand a chance at braking in time, and it was about a ten-car rear-ender. I was removed from my car on a back board and taken to the nearest hospital, where a man was brought into the ER in the midst of a heart attack and little boy after being run over by a car elsewhere. I was going to live so I was left on the back board for about 90 minutes with a metal bedpan between my rump and the board. Understatement: ouch.

The leg was touch-and-go for 48 hours. I had to keep it consistently elevated or risk below-the-knee amputation. My mother drove down from Central NY to take care of me so I didn’t have to go anywhere but the bathroom. I also suffered nerve damage in the leg (there are still dead zones on the skin, so creepy!) and soft tissue damage to my spine and neck. And I can’t prove it medically, but that was when my memory started to go.

I was too traumatized to sue, though I likely should have. It would not have been frivolous; the lack of signage and personnel, the blind curve, and the fact that only a few of us drivers were insured at all were good enough reasons.

2011 marked the year I discovered an interest in history; at least, history as it should have been taught: not when and who, but how and why. As I continued to read about World War II, I started to feel confusion and anger about our leaders at the time, particularly the impact that Theodore Roosevelt’s presidency had on WWII (in other words, how his cousin Franklin was forced to clean up Teddy’s mess at the expense of the ENTIRE WORLD).

I also belong to a church which, like all churches, has a colorful history. Sometimes I find my self completely agog at the decisions of the leadership 40-100 years ago and beyond.

In the end, after speaking with my peers (some of whom have degrees in history), a lot of quiet contemplation, and likely at least a little prayer, I realized a wonderful, enlightening, soul-saving thing: we cannot look at history through the lens of the present.

When I read about leaders from Roosevelt to Brigham Young through the lens of the present, I am shocked, angered, and disgusted by their decisions. But I fail to take into account that which I mentioned above: each man is a product of his upbringing and the time in which he lived, and enlightenment can be severely limited by circumstance.

I am a product of my upbringing, my environment, and the time in which I was raised. I knew no minorities in my small town of 10,000, but my father was firm in teaching us that discrimination against others for any reason was wrong. He wouldn’t even let racist jokes pass. Still, when I went to college and witnessed my first sit-in by the Black Student Union, I was unprepared for the depth of their emotion over the (lost to my faulty memory) issues at hand. The anger, the vitriol, and the language seemed disproportionate to those issues; that I remember. But I was a middle-class white female with a scholarship: privileged. I think the best thing I did was not even pretend to understand or argue; I just asked questions and listened to the answers.

I do remember I used to be such a great listener, and very reliable. Now I worry that I will forget the thread of a conversation in the VERY MIDST OF IT, and that affects my listening. And even if I REMEMBER to keep a careful calendar, events and action items are forgotten.

So, long story long, I am going to write what I remember, and I am going to write it here. I could write it in a personal journal, but the release is not the same. I’ve written for release for decades: I used to write all my anger in letters as a teen and then burn them secretly in the backyard, hoping that I would find release for the emotions in the ashes and smoke. It worked sometimes.

Mind you, large chunks of my childhood, high school, college, courtships and marriage, and even my very best friendships pre- and post-1997 are fuzzy. The data is corrupted in storage. I may say it wrong, and I hope I can choose my words carefully so that I don’t hurt feelings.

And if you don’t like what I wrote, you can dismiss it out of hand, because my memory is like a leaky sieve. There! Built-in exoneration.

My one word for myself in 2012: RELEASE. Virtual ashes and smoke.