What a Drag It Is Getting Old

I just sat here for about five minutes trying to remember what it was I was going to write about.  I had started to write it in my head this morning—always a mistake to not write it down.  I’m sure all my best ideas have been lost to malfunctioning, inept, or rotting neurons. 

The great irony?   It was, of course, about forgetting.  Or rather, forgetting being the key developmental milestone of aging.  There comes a time, in life, when the developmental firsts are fewer and farther between.

Initially in life, they come so quickly, one can hardly keep up—holding one’s head up independently, rolling over, grabbing at objects, sitting up unassisted, up on all fours, crawling, pulling up, standing, stepping, walking all over your parents.  Not to mention the verbal milestones…babbling, sounds in imitation, first words, two-word phrases, sentences....

Then, they slow down.  Baby books are abandoned.  The first tooth is lost.  The first word is read.  And then many years later, the first period, first kiss…first heartbreak.  And as you make your way into your twenties they come even more slowly…the first job, the first apartment, the first marriage.  All this while, you’re still growing, still developing in important ways. 

And then suddenly you aren’t.  Suddenly you find yourself saying to your daughter:

“Sophia, can you please help me find the raspberries.  I know I had half a box of them.  I gave you some in your lunch this morning, and then I put the rest of them away.  But I can’t find them for the life of me.”

Sophie peeks into the fridge, lackadaisically moves an item or two and says, “I don’t see them either, Mom.”

I keep looking, exasperated.  What the hell could I have done with them?  Five minutes later, after a fruitless search, I give up.

The next day, I’m making breakfast and I open up one of the cabinets.  There, sitting atop the dishes are the raspberries, room temperature, but in tact.  I feel a touch of panic in my stomach.  I have started to go backwards.  I have developmental decay. 

Isn’t this how it started for my grandmother?  She thought people were coming out of her television to steal her food.  That’s what she said, once we started noticing something was wrong.  Once we intervened.  What came before that?  What were the earliest signs? I show Kevin the raspberries and make him promise, for the third time that month, that he will change my diapers, when, inevitably, I will no longer be able to control my bodily functions. 

“It’s just stress.  You’re doing too much,” Kevin assures me, adding the raspberries to his cereal. 

“You’re evading the question.” I note.  “Just say yes.”

“Yes,” says Kevin, rolling his eyes, and, likely crossing his fingers behind his back.  I just know he is going to put me in a home. 

Since that time, when I have an episode of forgetting—I misplace my keys, I can’t remember why I walked into the room, I forget to go to the gymnastics make up class I scheduled because I forgot to take Sophie to the original gymnastics class, Kevin smirks and says, “Raspberries!” 

Easy for him to say, as he has yet to break 40, and to my knowledge, has never left fruit where it doesn’t belong.  I give him my most exasperated smile, but underneath I feel a twinge of fear.  I just was getting the hang of life.  I’m not ready to start aging. 

Oh, I suppose there are still many firsts ahead—but I’m ready to stop running towards the next milestone.  I spent so many years wanting to grow up, to be older and able to do more.  Now, here I am—making up the rules, paying the bills, calling the shots—and I want to push pause.  Not go back, but stand still and enjoy life in the middle. 

Committing to Memory

There are the memories I have that I can’t help having. They’ve stuck in my brain, though I’d sooner forget many of them: Being watched by my neighbor (who sat in a tree) as I peed surreptitiously next to my wading pool. Vying with a classmate for the lead role of a sickly giraffe in the school play with the line, “By dose is all stubbed up,” (only to really get sick and lose the part). Getting dumped on a dark highway by the straight-edge, skate-punk boy to whom I lost my virginity (“Remember Melissa,” he had the audacity to say, “there are alternatives to water towers and razor blades.”)

And then there are the moments that I consciously commit to memory. The scenes I rehearse in my mind until they are locked in the folds of my gray matter. They capture something about a person, a time, an experience that is defining. They are the moments worth writing about, worth airing on an empty day. They have the power to evoke a smile or a tear when it has felt impossible to conjure either.

I do this with all people who are dear to me. I do this with Sophia.

When Sophia was first born, Kevin and I played Dreamland, a compilation of world lullabies, over and over. We all found it soothing. Poignant. The first song off the album is Naima, written by West African singer Angelique Kidjo for her daughter. It is achingly beautiful—I wish I could play it here—it captures the gratitude, relief, and deep pain I felt in those first weeks after Sophie was born. After I healed, when I finally could, I picked Sophia up and danced her around the room to that song, tears streaming down my face. Now, hearing the music unlocks the memory. It is almost too much to bear, so I rarely turn it on. A few notes and I am right back in my living room, twirling across the industrial beige carpet, Sophia light and warm in my arms, her head against my shoulder and the overwhelming joy that I had my baby at last.

Two years later, a second, musical memory is forever etched in my mind. Sophia and I take a Music Together, a parent-child class that is founded upon the belief that all children are musical and all children can achieve basic musical competence. We thoroughly enjoy it. The teacher exudes a particular calm that has a powerful effect on Sophie; she is exuberant (yet well behaved) from the minute we walk in the room. There is one song, Bound for Glory that Sophia routinely requests. It is an old spiritual, made new by a rhythmic chugging, evocative of a train. The teacher distributes bands of jingle bells to the kids and Sophie dons them like bracelets all the way up to her armpits. As soon as she hears the music, she is up, chugging along the perimeter of the room with a look of determination and no awareness of what anyone else is doing. There is a complete lack of self-consciousness, total immersion in the music. The teacher starts the class in place, eventually following Sophia who is already off on her invisible track, bound for glory. I love watching her so focused and full of energy; I am reluctant to start moving around the room myself. The other day, I had to conceal my tears as I followed in her path, hoping a little of that confidence might rub off onto me.

So much of my past is fuzzy; I know the memories I have are each salient for a reason, but few are positive. These memories, these special times with Sophia, I will not lose. I have guaranteed their survival by writing about them.

This, I will remember.