“…Then you mix three parts of copper in, no wait, actually two parts copper, one part silver…..” our instructor shook her head a little as she tried to retrieve the information. This particular instructor was teaching us metalsmithing; she was something of a local celebrity for her witty style and perfect solder joints. We all loved her, and forgave her for her regular bouts of memory loss. She turned to face the class.”I have to look it up. I have baby brain. Ever since I had my son, I can’t remember anything.” She said it with a sad smile, and we all laughed. But only a few of us knew she was serious, and I wasn’t one of them. I got to know my instructor quite well, and she did have bouts of total non-recall. She bought my old sturdy desk, somehow losing $50 of the money on the way over. She also forgot a few of the pieces of the desk. I thought she was quirky, which isn’t usually a compliment, but in this case was.
A few days ago I found myself in my friends van, confessing. “There is something seriously wrong with me,” I informed her. “I can’t remember a goddamn thing. Names, faces, what I did yesterday. I find myself going downstairs to retrieve an item, than forgetting why I am there in the first place, picking up something else and going back upstairs, only to then remember, and repeating the process…”
“It’s happening to me too,” she said. Then we both uttered the words forming in our minds, at the same time, as if we were b-list actors in a horror movie.
“Early-onset Altzhiemers,” we decided, choking out the diagnosis.
But then we had to laugh, what were the chances we both had it? Isn’t that sort of…rare? I had assumed, wrongly, that after the insane sleep deprevation and the late nights and the utter exhaustion of the early childrearing years wore off, I would regain my brain, extracting it from the puddle of goo in which it now resided. I thought clarity would be regained, that my sharp edges of intellect would come back, shearing though all the fog. Instead, Fog. And more fog. And endless fog like the kind you also see in horror movies. And honestly, it does scare me to death, that I am slowly losing my capacities. So I fake it. I do those stupid memory tricks that people know you are doing, like repeating your new aquaintences name at lest three times so it imbeds itself in the grey matter. You sound like an idiot doing it.
“Nice to meet you, Reginald. So, Reginald, what is it you do for work? Umm Hmm, that’s nice. Great Hockey game, eh Reginald?” and so on until the person finds a way to extract themselves from the crazy-repeater lady. You lose friends, but at least you remember who you now don’t get to hang out with.
The worst was a few months ago, I left a burner on low and the water running in the bathtub, as an unexpected neighbor came over for a quick word that turned into lots of words. Then, as I went downstairs, absent-mindedly wondering why I was there, I heard the water running. “OH SHIT” I thought as I flew to the bathroom, just in time to turn off the water before it flooded the entire bathroom. And when I say just, I mean a gnat’s cock away from flooding the bathroom. I’ll let you work out how small that might be (a phrase I picked up in England, pardon the rudeness of it, it’s just that jewellers tend to be like sailors, only without the sailing part).
As you can see, I have a problem. There may be more than one but this is the biggest concern going. But it isn’t only my problem. The more I talk to other mothers, the more I know I am not alone. Multi-tasking has turned into mega-multi-tasking and I think there are only so many synapses to go around. I don’t have that many compartments left in my head, so some things just get shoved off for good, like lemmings.
My mother has it figured out, she gives money to the Altzhiemers Society every year. “I probably won’t remember them, but maybe they will remember me,” she says, with a smile. I will do the same, if I can ever remember where the chequebook is.