REMEMBER PRIVACY?

Have you taken a DNA test yet?  You know the ones. You send away for a kit, then spit in a test tube and send it back to Ancestry or another outfit that tells you where your ancestors  hailed from. If you choose to share your DNA results, you might even find some long-lost relatives.

I have done this and learned what I already knew -- my ancestors are all from Scotland and Ireland.  And no surprising relatives were uncovered -- those who showed up were no closer than third or fourth cousins, so I guess none of my near family is participating at this point.

In her recent novel The Candy House, Jennifer Egan takes the concept of shared DNA information one step further, perhaps several steps further, and imagines a world where you can upload all of your memories to a box and, if you choose, share your memories with others who are doing the same.  And it is not just the things you actually consciously remember that are uploaded. The entire store of everything you have ever experienced is disgorged.

Thus, if, for instance, your parents have uploaded and shared  their memories, you can choose to access their memories of a given day or time and learn more about their lives.  At first intriguing, but, upon further reflection, horrifying.  This would clearly be a Pandora's box -- one where something once seen, could not be unseen.  

Just imagine the mental and psychic overload.  

Of course, none of us would choose to implement the memory box, would we?  I can hear you saying emphatically, I would never do that. Yet I have shared my DNA information on Ancestry and, if you haven’t done this, you have likely expressed political views on social media or taken one of those innocuous-seeming quizzes that are actually designed to collect data about you and your habits. 

Why do we do this? I remember reading George Orwell's 1984 back in the 1960s and being horrified by the notion of Big Brother. Yet, we have effectively invited Big Brother into our homes. (Don't be too quick to congratulate yourself if you eschew social media. Notice when you send an email to a friend in which you mention that you are looking for a new backpack, and the next day an ad for backpacks flashes on the screen while you are doing a Google search for something entirely unrelated.)

And then, there's this.  Unless you have expressly asked to have it removed (and I hate to think what it would take to do this), there is an image of your house on Google Earth.  Further, anyone can look up your house on Zillow or Redfin and find out how much your paid for it and the amount of your property taxes.  Sure, this information is public record, but how many people bothered to go to a courthouse and look it up before an online search was possible.

If the British mystery series I watch on TV are any indication, it would appear that there are CCTV cameras everywhere in the UK, recording everyone all of the time.  And I have read that sophisticated facial imagery allows Chinese officials to pick someone out of a crowd of thousands (and then, presumably, pick them up). It would not surprise me to find such technology coming here to the U.S. very soon.  Maybe it's already here.

None of this seems to be very troublesome to most people under 40. They appear to have little concern about privacy.  So is privacy now as quaint as, say, a family sharing one phone tethered to the wall?

Maybe if you never experienced privacy, you don't know what you're missing.  Or maybe you won't care until someone posts naked pictures of you online and you find out how nearly impossible it is to have them taken down. 

I, for one, remember privacy fondly.  As I have written before, I miss letters.  Remember sealed envelopes? Unless someone steamed one open or plundered your box full of love letters, these missives were eyes-only.  

What a concept.

Still, it does seem that it is nearly impossible to preserve privacy without going completely off the grid, and who among us is ready, or even able, to do this?

I will leave you with this challenge:   Google yourself.  And then tell me what you think (in the public comments to this public blog).

                                                        Photo by Marten Newhall on Unsplash

WHEN WORDS FAIL, CLICHES RUSH IN

We all do it.  We hear that a friend is facing something awful, and we don't know what to say, so we say something hackneyed to fill the uncomfortable silence.  

Maybe we can do better.  Here are some thoughts. 

Unhelpful things to say to someone who is going through a hard time:

 

You're going to be fine.  Only helpful if you absolutely know this to be true.

It could have been worse.  The fact that it could have been worse, does not make a bad situation unworthy of concern.  

When one door closes, another opens.  Yes, but as a friend of mine once said, "It can be hell in the hallway in-between."

There's a lesson to be learned here.  Maybe, but as the above-mentioned friend also asked, "Would you have chosen it as an elective course?”  

God doesn't give you more than you can handle.  Define handle.  (And what kind of God would set up such a test?)

Everything happens for a reason.  And what would that reason be?  Sometimes shit just happens. 

What doesn't kill you will make you stronger.  Sometimes this is true, but I wouldn't say it to someone who survived the car wreck, but was rendered paraplegic and locked-in.

Time heals all wounds.   Maybe not all.  Maybe some of them we just learn to carry.  

 

The best things to say to someone who is going through a hard time:

I'm sorry.

It sucks.

I'm here.

Your thoughts?

                                                           Photo by National Cancer Institute on Unsplash

JOHN LENNON WAS MY FIRST CRUSH

I have been thinking about John Lennon.  A Facebook post from a friend reminded me that today would have been his 82^nd birthday.  I had memorized his birth date (October 9, 1940) in the Beatlemania days, but, as is often the case lately, I had lost track of today’s date.  After seeing my friend's post, I went to my computer and found a YouTube of John singing Imagine. Tears came to my eyes.  Was I really tearing up at my age over a 50-year-old song?  

Well, yes. 

A while back, AARP magazine published an article entitled, "The Night John Lennon Died."  Seriously -- AARP?  Well, why not? He would now be decades past the age to join AARP (50) were he still alive.  And Paul McCartney has been on the cover, after all.  

But, can it really be 42 years?

I well remember the evening of December 8, 1980.  I was lying on my couch reading, when I was interrupted by the ringing of my phone.  It was a friend calling to say she had turned on the radio, and they were playing nothing but Beatles music.  

John Lennon was dead.  Gunned down in front of his home in New York.  

I was stunned.  And not just stunned by the news, but by my very visceral response.  I was gutted. Why was this hitting me so hard? I had, after all, just turned 31. I had long since outgrown Beatlemania--hadn't I?

Well, yes, but there are persons who have such an effect on young lives that the effect reverberates through the years.

Here's the thing.  And I don't expect those of you under, say, 65 to fully understand.  John Lennon was not only my first crush -- he and The Beatles were the backdrop to my youth in a way that was only possible in a world where we were all listening to the same radio stations, a world that predated Spotify and Apple Music and other such sites that have sent us scurrying into our own music silos.  

And, yes, it's terrific to have music on demand, but I am so glad that I experienced the collective experience that the Beatles brought to my generation.

Because The Beatles changed everything.  Not just music, but the sensibility of my peers.

Here's how it started for me.  One day, soon after my fourteenth birthday, my best friend called me to share a new song.  Picture this: She is holding her radio up to her phone (tethered as all phones were in those days to a wall) so that I can listen to I Wanna Hold Your Hand on my similarly tethered phone.  

I was electrified.  I simply lack words to describe how different this song was from anything we had heard before.  It was all raw energy and joy -- nothing like the smoothly produced rock we were accustomed to.  

Who were these Beatles?  My friends and I spent the next year obsessing, as only 14-year-olds can, over this group and the music they were releasing.  And, course, we had to choose our favorite Beatle.  There were lots of Paul girls and some who liked George, the quiet one. I even had a friend who was mad for Ringo.  But it was always John for me.  

It wasn't just that I thought him sexy before I was entirely sure what that meant.  (And, yes, it was possible to be that innocent at 14 in 1964).  John was original.  John was charismatic.  John was clever. John was funny.  Not haha funny.  But sardonic.  Sarcastic.  Silly.  His wit was lightning quick.  He was John.

After a little time passed, I knew what it meant that he was sexy.  And he was still charismatic.  More serious and troubled at times, but the humor was still there.

And the music was changing too.  Like I said, I Wanna Hold Your Hand changed everything.  But they didn't stop there.  They kept producing new sounds.  Their time of being together and famous was only about six years, but what they did musically in that time is staggering.  Their progression from I Wanna Hold Your Hand to A Hard Days' Night to Sgt. Pepper's to The White Album to Abbey Road to Let It Be in such a short time was breathtaking.  (And these are just some of their albums.)  And more impressive than the output was the endless originality.  They never stopped changing and innovating.

It was Elvis who first shook up the post-war generation, but it was The Beatles who were the pied pipers of the sixties, leading us further away from the staid, grey Eisenhower years and accompanying us through the turmoil of those chaotic years of assassinations, the Civil Rights Movement, and Vietnam.

Who is doing this for today's teenagers as we once again navigate chaos and fear?  Who could do it?

And who would John be today?  How would he have grown?  Where would his wit and intelligence have taken him?  What music might he have produced to help us through this time? 

I wish I could have spent one hour in conversation with him.  

I wish he were with us still.

                                                Photo by Julie Ricard on Unsplash

MOURNING BY PROXY: Some Thoughts About My Mother and the Queen

 

Two days ago, my brother Ron texted to tell me that Queen Elizabeth had died.  You may be wondering why my American brother felt moved to share this with his American sister.  Even more puzzling will be my confession that I felt emotional upon receiving this news.

 

         It’s not that The Queen loomed large in my life.  She did not.  I am a not a royalist, and I did not pay close attention to the British royals.  Oh, sure, I enjoyed gossip about her disfunctional family as much as the next person, but, really, what is royalty for in the twenty-first century?

 

         There is this, though -- the queen was a bit like furniture.  Let’s call her political furniture, a world leader who was always where we expected her to be, doing what we expected her to do.  She was the one unchanging political fact of the twentieth century.  So, it’s odd, even dislocating, that she is gone.  

 

         But I don’t think that is why my brother texted me, and it is not why I felt emotional upon hearing the news.  

 

It was all about my mother.

 

My mother, who was a Scot, loved the queen, and, while it is true that she would bristle if anyone in her adopted America mistook her Scottish accent for an English accent, she was proud to be British. And she did love the queen, spoke of her as if she knew her personally. So, given that they were on a first-name basis, I will here refer to the queen simply as Elizabeth.

 

My mother was born in Glasgow six years before Elizabeth’s birth in London. She left this life at age 93; Elizabeth made it to 96.  And, although their circumstances could not have been more different, both came of age during, and were shaped by, what my parents’ generation simply referred to as “the war.” (WWII)  

 

         My mother always spoke with admiration about Elizabeth’s father, who, after ascending the throne upon his brother’s abdication, stayed with his wife in London during The Blitz.  Elizabeth and her sister spent most of the war at Windsor Castle, 20 miles outside of London.  My mother and her sister, having little choice, remained in Glasgow, which was bombed during the Blitz.  

 

In 1940, when she was 20, my mother supported the war effort by joining The Women’s Forestry Service, doing what was then considered men’s work, while the men were off fighting.   

 

 

In 1944, when she was 18, Elizabeth joined the Auxiliary Territorial Service, the women’s branch of the British army, as an auto mechanic.  

 

 

 

            In 1943, when she was 23, my mother married my father.  She gave birth to her first child, eleven months later.  Two more children followed.  In 1947, when she was 21, Elizabeth married her prince.  Her first child was born a year later.  Three more children followed.

 

Elizabeth was still a princess when my parents left Scotland for the new world, and when the princess became queen a few years later, my mother proudly displayed her portrait, along with one of Prince Philip, on our living room wall.  So, although most of you probably picture Elizabeth as an old woman, the young queen was a fixture of my childhood. 

 

 

For all of her long life, my mother followed Elizabeth with great attention, speaking of her often and with affection, perhaps even a bit of wistfulness. I think the royal family was a link to the life she had reluctantly left behind when my father decided that the family should move -- first to Canada, and then to the U.S. 

 

         And, so, I am calling my emotion over the queen’s death mourning by proxy.  I am my mother’s proxy, feeling some of what I believe she would have felt.  (I am deeply grateful that she did not live to hear the news of Elizabeth’s passing.) Or maybe it is that the queen was a proxy for my mother.  As long as the queen was alive, my mother’s parallel life wasn’t quite over.   

 

         I don’t know if the monarchy will survive the queen’s passing, and I don’t much care.  I just know that two young women grew up and grew old, more-or-less in tandem, and the second of them has died.   

 

For this I mourn.  

 

 

            

 

SHOWER THE PEOPLE

Shower the people you love with love

Show them the way you feel

Things are gonna work out fine

If you only will.

        -  James Taylor**

Last week, I spoke on the phone with an old friend who lives about as far from me as it’s possible to get without falling into an ocean.  We don't talk very often, but she is dear to me.  When we signed off, she said, "I love you."  "Me, too, you," I replied.  Today, I had lunch with another friend, who, talking about the difficulty of finding time for friends amidst the fullness of our lives, said, "I only see you about every six months and I love you."  “And I, you,” I responded.

Simple words, yet often left unsaid.

Which brings me to the James Taylor song quoted above.  This song absolutely shreds me every time I listen to it.  His soulful voice admonishing us to “shower the people you love with love” yanks my heart right out of my chest.

Yesterday, I spoke with a family member who told me he has been risking vulnerability by telling friends and family what they mean to him.  Why, I wonder, is it risky to tell people that we care, that we love them, that they are an important part of our lives?  Why should this make us feel vulnerable?

Why do we hold back?  Is it because we believe the important people in our lives will always be there?  Here is a cautionary tale.  I had a friend with whom I shared a love of writing.  We would meet for lunch from time-to-time and talk about our kids.  We would exchange drafts of writing projects.  There came a few months during which we didn’t have any contact.  We were both busy. He was in a new relationship.  I kept thinking that I needed to call him, that I would call him.  

And then, quite suddenly, he died.  I never got to have lunch with him again or to tell him that his friendship was important to me. 

Dear reader, if there is someone you are thinking about calling, please do it.  Don’t wait. 

It's not difficult for me to tell some people how I feel. I almost never leave either of my daughters without saying "I love you."  This comes as naturally as breathing.  It was not so with my parents, who, like many in their generation, did not make these declarations of love.  Toward the end of her life, I would tell my mother that I loved her.  She seemed surprised, then pleased.  She was ultimately able to tell me that she loved me.  It felt important to share these words before she left this life. 

I find it easy to tell some friends what they mean to me, and with others. I hesitate.  Will I make them uncomfortable?  Is this their way of relating?  With these friends, I can call.  I can check in. There are ways of showing love without words.

So, let’s do it.  Let’s let our love shine.  

And let me say to my friends and family, right here and now, in writing, I love you.  Thank you for seeing me through.  Thank you for accompanying me on this journey.  You mean the world to me.

Photo by Nick Fewings on Unsplash

**  This is not the first time I have quoted James Taylor in a blog post. I come back to him again and again.  He seems to be providing the soundtrack for my life.  For those who don't know the song, here he is singing Shower the People. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GfJWqjoekow

HEAVEN, I'M IN HEAVEN

"The world is too much with us."  

William Wordsworth wrote that.  It was true for him in the early 1800s, and it is true 200 years later.  There is much about which to despair. There are many reasons to feel overwhelmed.  And, yet, there is much joy to be found when we turn our focus to simple pleasures.

The other day, I was hanging sheets on my clothesline, and I found myself humming, "Heaven, I'm in heaven . . .."  No, I wasn't thinking about Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing cheek-to-cheek.  I was just happy, standing there with the breeze in my face and the knowledge that I would sleep between fresh sheets that night.

Here are some more of the simple pleasures that lift my spirits.  I refuse to allow the state of the world to rob me of their charms.

The first cup of tea in the morning

The feel of autumn in the air

The return of birdsong at the end of winter

The slant of morning light 

The slant of evening light

The feel of a grandchild's cheek

The smell of the earth after rain

A hard rain after a long dry spell

Sunshine after a long wet spell

Green trees against a blue sky

The feel of earth in my hands

Laughing so hard that I snort

Curling up with a book

A hot bath

A phone call or message from an old friend

A walk with a friend

Embracing a loved one

Chocolate -- with or without any of the above 

Happily, except for the tea and chocolate, everything I have listed is free.  What are your simple pleasures?  Please share them in the comments.  

PLEASE MR. POSTMAN**

I received a note in the mail last week.  The 3 X 5 envelope in which it arrived fairly shone among the circulars and pleas for donations.  And, get this, the message inside was hand-written.

I was thrilled.  

There was a time when receiving such a note would not have been remarkable, but that time has passed.  Now, searching for a personal note or letter among the junk mail that arrives each day is like panning for gold.  A reward is possible, but it is not likely.

Those of you younger than 40 may have little or no experience of personal mail, given that the flow of letters came to an abrupt end somewhere in the early ‘90s with the arrival of email.  Now, with the availability of texts, Skype, Zoom, and FaceTime, it is difficult to remember that until fairly recently, long-distance friendships and relationships were largely conducted via the mail.  Sure, phone calls were a part of daily life by the middle of the Twentieth Century, but most calls were “toll calls.”  That is, there was a charge by the minute for any calls outside of one’s local calling area.  Indeed, until I got my first cell phone, my phone calls from work to my daughters at home, only 12 miles away, but across a state line, were toll calls for which I had to reimburse my employer.  

So, it is wonderful to be able to pay a flat monthly fee to call anyone in the U.S. via cell phone--no more waiting for Sundays when long-distance charges were reduced. And, certainly, all of the above-mentioned means of communication are fast and cheap.  While one of my daughters was living overseas for several years, we had regular Skype calls.  It was terrific to be able to see her face and to talk with her directly.  This was far better than the blue air letters that were my mother’s means of communication with her family in Scotland while I was growing up.  How sad for her that she never talked directly with her mother after moving away.  

So, yes, I am grateful for all of these modern means of connecting.  And yet I can’t help but think something has been lost with the near-end of communication via letter.  A few years ago, I opened a trunk where I had saved nearly every letter anyone had ever written to me.  I stacked the letters on my dining room table and spent a couple of weeks going through them.  Many of these letters were quite long.  Some were sad or funny.  Each letter was a time capsule.  Each brought back precious memories of my younger days.  I wound up sending some of the letters back to friends so that they, too, could hold reminders of times past in their hands.   

How will this work now?  I did print out and save the emails that my daughter Anne sent to us during her semester abroad in 2005, but now that most communication is via text, what will be forgotten?

  

And what are biographers to do?  Will they search social media, where people put their best [or worst] selves forward?  Where are people’s deepest feelings and thoughts being preserved?

Here’s something else.  About 35 years ago, I wrote a short story that consisted largely of letters between a woman in Edinburgh and a man in Seattle.  The characters had agreed that they would not use the telephone during their time apart.  This plot device was already a stretch in the late ‘80s, but what would a reader make of it now?  “Why,” the reader would ask, “aren’t they texting?”

And what about love songs that can mean nothing to young people today, songs such as Please Mr. Postman (the Marvelletes), P.S., I Love You (The Beatles), The Letter (The Box Tops), and Return to Sender (Elvis)?  In each of these now quaint-seeming songs, the singer is communicating, or attempting to communicate, with his love via letter.

What might equivalent love songs be about now?  Ghosting?  Dating apps? 

Seriously, though, I have nothing against progress (or new love songs).  I just hope the price of convenience is not the loss of the stories of our lives.  

I, for one, am very happy to have my collection of letters.

Photo by Joel Moysuh on Unsplash

**I dedicate this post to Lauren Chesnut, who, despite being too young to remember the heyday of personal mail, makes an ongoing and  herculean effort to keep it flowing.

THE SECOND TIME AROUND: Further Thoughts on Being a Grandmother

(for my granddaughters Daisy Belle, Charlotte May, and Frances Rose)

     There are those who'll bet love comes but once and yet

     I'm very glad we met the second time around.

                                            -  Sammy Cahn and Jimmy Van Heusen (popularized by Frank Sinatra)

A few months ago, I wrote about the joy of meeting my first granddaughter.  And now, I have two more -- twins born to my daughter Anne.  The joy remains, but that's not what I want to talk about today. Instead, I want to talk about the unanticipated difference between parenting and grand-parenting.  

As I have written before, raising my two daughters was one of the best experiences of my life.  It was also one of the hardest.  Of course, the early years get buried under the accretion of the years that follow; memories fade as we watch our children grow into adults.  It is only now, as I watch my daughters tend to their daughters, that I remember just how hard it was. 

Now, I remember sleep-deprived me tending to a baby, while trying to manage the many chores that keep a household running--grocery shopping, preparing meals, paying bills, running the vacuum cleaner, etc.  And then going back to work part time -- leaving the house with baby spit-up on my clothes.  And a couple of years later, there was a second daughter -- so, all of the above, with a toddler to wrangle. My daughters' dad was a hands-on parent, so I certainly didn't do all of this alone.  And, still, it was hard.  

Wonderful, joyous, and hard.

But, now, I get to experience the first year all over again with my granddaughters.  And I get to pay attention in a way I wasn't able to the first time around.  Yes, I remember how excited I was when my daughters first engaged with the world around them; when they first rolled over, then sat up, and crawled; when they first walked and talked. But, I was also trying to attend to in all those other things I listed above. 

When I am with my granddaughters, I am simply present.  I am not trying to make a meal or pay bills. I can give these babies my full attention.  I am really noticing each new milestone.  And I don't think I'm alone in this experience.  Friends have told me they feel like they are also noticing more than they did the first time around, that they are enjoying having the time to savor the unfolding of these new beings. 

And here's another thing.  I am way more confident than I was with my first-born.  Certainly, my second daughter got the benefit of my experience with her sister, and this is even more true with my granddaughters.  If a granddaughter cries, and then keeps crying after I have tended to her needs, I don't assume I am doing something wrong; I just figure she needs to be held until her little nervous system calms down.  If one twin cries while I am tending to the other, I know that she will be okay until I get to her. 

There are downsides, of course.  I do get tired.  Sometimes, I get very tired.  I don't have the energy I had when my girls were babies, and lifting an 18-pound, eight-month-old is very hard on my back. The good news is I get to go home and rest, while the parents carry on, bleary-eyed. 

All-in-all, this grand-parenting is a very good gig.   

                                                 

A PRAYER FOR CHALLENGING TIMES

When the world feels almost too broken to bear, I struggle to find hope, to not give in to inertia born of despair.  In times such as these, I find prayer and meditation to be a means of centering, a balm, a quieting that creates space for a rebirth of hope and courage. In this space, there is the possibility that an idea will arise, an idea of what I might do, in my small way, to foster peace, to bring comfort to those who need comforting.  

In this spirit, I offer a prayer, a meditation for challenging times.  

 

 

I pray for the body of the world.

I pray for the ten thousand things.

 

I pray for the brokenness of the world.

I pray for the eternal Tao.

 

I pray for those I love and those I cannot love.

I pray for those who have passed and those who are yet to come.

 

I pray for those who suffer in body, mind, or spirit.

I pray that they be healed, comforted, granted peace.   

 

I pray for the creatures who crawl, run, fly, climb, or swim.

I pray for the non-sentient, for they are energy after all.

 

I pray for plants and trees and all rooted things.

I pray for oceans, lakes, and rivers.

 

I pray for peace.

I pray for kindness.

I pray that justice might prevail. 

 

I pray

I pray

I pray.

 

 

                                                Photo by Zoltan Tasi on Unsplash

YOU MUST REMEMBER THIS

 

You've heard of the age of reason.  (Begins somewhere around age 7.)

And the age of consent.  (Varies from state to state.) 

Well, it would appear that I have reached the age of forgetting.  (Let’s put this one at over age 60.)  

Sure, I passed 60 some time ago, but I have only recently reached the point where I can't deny that I have reached the age of forgetting, of losing things.  

At least once each day, I lose my phone.  It's not really lost.  I know it's somewhere in my house. I just can't remember where.  Same with my earbuds – they walk off regularly.  (It is possible they are partying with the  socks that never emerge from the dryer with their partners.)

It wasn’t always so.  When my daughters were young, one or another of them would ask, “Where are my shoes?’ or “Where did I put my book?” or would shriek, “I can’t find my homework!”  I would pause and do what I called “the vision thing,” (thank you George H. W. Bush), and promptly respond, “Behind the big chair” or "On the table” or “Check your bedroom floor.”  I knew where everything was.

Sigh.

And then there is the issue of forgetting words.  Again, it's more losing than forgetting.  The words are in my brain somewhere. They generally return after hovering tantalizingly close to the surface of my mind for seconds or minutes or, occasionally, hours before emerging.  I have learned that it is counterproductive to try to force the word to make an appearance.  This only causes it to burrow more deeply into my brain.  But if I wait and pretend I don't care, it will eventually step out of its hiding place – usually without any warning. This can lead to some awkward exchanges  I might be talking with someone about, say, the weather when I startle that someone by suddenly and irrelevantly declaring, 'japonica" or whatever word I had lost earlier in the day and suddenly remembered. 

  

image by absolutvision

(Is it a good sign that I know I have forgotten a word?  It would be worse, I suppose, if the word were so far lost that I didn't know I had ever made its acquaintance.) 

A couple of nights ago, while doing an acrostic puzzle,  I asked my husband to remind me of the name of the game with baskets on poles.  “Not jai alai,” I helpfully prompted. “The other one.”  

“Oh, yeah,” said he, and immediately lost the word. 

"The one that has become so popular on college campuses in recent years,”  said I.

He looked at me, stricken. Such a simple word and both of us had temporarily lost it.

Later the same evening, while we were talking about something else entirely, I suddenly cried out, “lacrosse.”  I had forgotten the earlier conversation, but the word jumped out anyway.  He was momentarily startled by my outburst, but we both went to sleep relieved and happy.

I had a similar experience while walking with a friend a week or two ago.  She was telling me about a book (I think -- it is possible that I am not remembering correctly), speaking with her usual easy fluency, when she suddenly lost a word.  "You know what I mean," she said.  "The word for wiping out a whole group of people."

"Oh yes," I said, "It's  . . ." and then I, too, promptly lost the word.  We figured we both knew what she was trying to say, and she went on with sharing her thought until I interrupted her just seconds later to later to cry triumphantly, "genocide!"  Not a word that should be spoken triumphantly, I might add.  (And now I remember, it was the Olympics and the Chinese government, not a book, she was discussing.)

So, does one person forgetting a word drive that word out of a companion’s head as well?  Is this a thing?

 

I wonder.

(It is interesting to me, that I rarely lose a word while writing.  Does this make me like the Alzheimer's patients who can sing, but not talk?)

Here's one that even youngish folk will have experienced - I will walk into into a room and forget what I was after.  Happily, this one is easily remedied by walking back to where I started to reboot my brain.

One more.  I used to have a great memory for conversations.  I still do.  It’s just that I can’t always remember who they were with, which leads to questions such as, “Did I tell you this already,” or “Have we talked about this?” 

On the other hand, I can hear one bar of a song that was popular in my teens or twenties and immediately identify the title and the singer.  The lyrics also flow forth easily as I sing along.

Very useful.

Really, though, this forgetting thing isn’t so bad.  I once read that if you forget where you put your keys, this isn’t a problem, but if you forget what they are for, you’re in trouble.  

So far, so good.