Memory

Lately I feel like I’m a walking, talking Mad Lib book. Remember those? It would leave key words out of a sentence and ask you to fill in the verb, noun, adverb, etc. Filling those blanks with random words, well, to a 10-year-old it was hilarious. I could easily do one of those Mad Libs with any of my daily conversations. It’s not so hilarious now. Some people call it “Mom Brain” and some would just call it absent minded. It makes me crazy because I never used to be the one searching (often to no avail) for that word that it just…right…there, right on the tip of my tongue. Instead of being able to recall it, my mind jumps to whether or not I packed Lucy’s snack. And if I did (please let that be a yes?) did I remember to put that snack in her backpack? If I was able look at what my mind does in those awkward silences that fill the middle of my sentences sometimes I think, if I could see the action going on, it would look like a jack rabbit hopped up on speed. No pattern, no discernable destination, but it’s getting somewhere awfully fast.
Yesterday I called my Mom for a very specific reason. When I heard the phone ringing, I tipped my head to the side to hold the phone between my ear and my shoulder so I could finish the dishes. As soon as I heard the “Hello?” my mind went blank. I can only assume that the thought drained out of my head when I tilted it to the side. So I chatted with her about her day and hung up.
And that’s not the worst it’s been. Oh no, not even close. I’ve called Jon at work and actually had sentences come out of my mouth that sounded a lot like this. “Hey, I wanted to talk to you about that…thing…you know, the thing that sits on the….thingy… by the front door? I think it needs to be fixed.” And he actually knew what I was talking about! Yeah, it’s exactly what you’re thinking: Jon and I have moved to a higher plane of communication. Either that or we have both lost to ability to remember the names of the same things. Which sounds way more likely.
I think some of it comes from laughing so hard at my parents for all those years when they’d get our names mixed up, or (yep, it happened to them too) they’d forget what they were going to say. My sisters call me the Chosen One. They say that I never got in any trouble from my Dad. The truth is a lot less flattering: by the time he got the right name to travel from his mind and out of his mouth, I was long gone. After all, it takes a while to yell “Karen! No! Kjersti! No! Michelle! Crap! Nancy! No! Megan!!” Like I said, I was out of there. Maybe by then he had forgotten why he was yelling his kids’ names and went back to reading his paper, blissfully unaware (probably until drifting off to sleep that night) which one of us was really in trouble.
Luckily, I am not the only one who is affected by my grey matter taking a sabbatical. I can commiserate with friends and my sisters who have all been in this strange land of Having Kids. I am able to recall precisely what time of day each of my kids was born. How much they weighed, how long they were, and even what percentage their head circumference was at their last check-up. But ask me what I just drove twenty minutes to Target to buy, and I’ll look at you like you’re speaking Hindu. Because I forgot to bring my list with me, so I’d probably smile politely and say, “Well, you know….I’m here for that um, thingy?”