THERE is hope for all of us who arrive at the top of the stairs, breathless, and suddenly forget the why of why we’re there. Rest assured, the reason usually returns just when you’ve trudged to the bottom step again.
It’s an age thing and it’s also why it’s a good idea to live in a bungalow.
The forgetting thing sets off a tiny twinge – not unlike the recent one in my little finger that forecast buckets of rain.
When my friend got married she received a rather large barometer with a real goat’s head, twisted horns and all... straight off the set of The Exorcist.
Me? My little finger predicts showers. I’m no goat’s toe.
But for all of us who forget keys, names and faces, there is hope. It may actually be good for your brain, according to a book by clinical neuropsychologist Ylva Ostby and her sister, the novelist Hilda Ostby.
Misplacing something or forgetting a name or a face is normal, they argue, in The Science and Secrets of Remembering and Forgetting. The sisters say that you only misplace your keys because your brain has other priorities and forgetting some kinds of information is the brain’s way of protecting itself.
Perhaps this is the brain’s way of de-fragging. If you don’t know how to defrag, go feed your woolly mammoth, you’re deep in the dark ages.
The “forgetting things” sisters’ words are deeply reassuring.
When our children were young, I’d regularly panic about it. There was a continual traffic jam on my interior highway.
Dates just meant nothing. Once, in Paris, I turned to my husband and asked “Do you know what day yesterday was?”
“No,” said he.
“It was our wedding anniversary,” said I.
“Well, didn’t we have a lovely day,” said he.
The things is damned if I ever quite remember that exact date. I’m never quite sure and Mr Freud might have something to say about it. On the other hand, our best friends’ wedding anniversary never passes without a text from me. It is imprinted on my brain.
“Happy wedding anniversary!” I text her every year.
“How come you always remember?” she texts back.
“Anniversary of internment,” I reply.
I have a head for some dates, clearly not for others.
The thing is also that I look at the great chunks of information that my son can retain – whole computer languages, totally gobbledegook to me – and wonder why I can’t remember the shopping list unless I picture the bananas floating on a pool of strawberry yoghurt with a dirty great pile of spuds resting on top and a fat bar of chocolate hidden underneath.
My friend who has the brain of Goldsmith’s schoolmaster argues that it’s a storage problem really.
Our children remember all those facts because they have plenty of space in their brains.
We, meanwhile, consumed with 100 lists and demands, have little space and our brains have to chuck out the least relevant stuff.
It makes me feel like my old computer... an ancient clunky thing with a large hard drive and the speed of a big old Galapagos tortoise heading up the beach to lay a single egg.
Our boy, on the other hand, knows his C sharp from his C plus plus – don’t ask, all I know is that computers are a good thing to get into. But ask him about early childhood memories and he’ll say: How do you expect me to remember that?
Those hours gathering autumn leaves and making leaf print paintings, the visits to the bloody Ulster Museum to say hi to the mummy, hours in the sandpit at the park and the zoos of Europe.
We did the grand tour and I hate zoos. But our boy loved them. Every holiday involved a visit to waddle with the penguins, stare at the beautiful angel fish and make eyes at the spectacled bears.
Barcelona was always rated low because that’s where we watched the skinny lion eye up the scabby donkey who was top of his dinner menu. Never mind the donkey, I was traumatised.
Son? He’s well over it. The zoos of Amsterdam and Vienna and Barcelona and even the high hills of Bellevue Zoo – you’d need a Sherpa to get up them.
All that time spent making memories and where are they now?
Où sont les neiges d’antan? I ask him.
“Sorry mum I don’t really remember much about all that, I was very young,” he sighs.
Me? I can’t forget.
