My memory is lost. Between Mom Brain and menopause, I lose chunks of memory for minutes or hours.

I’ve gotten used to it.

I don’t get flustered if I can’t remember my next-door neighbor’s name – I know that her name will return to my memory at a later date.

My son does not like my memory lapses. I rushed to BART from work one afternoon, did a short leap from the platform to the train, and then remembered I’d forgotten my purse at the office. I hopped out as the train doors were closing. Hustled back to the office, took a later train and called my husband to tell him to pick up Nick.

I told my silly story about the forgotten purse while we ate dinner. I was laughing and I looked across the table to my son.

Nick was crying.

“It’s not funny, Mommy,” he says. He was pissed. “You need to stop forgetting everything.”

I realized that to Nick I appear out of control. The Mommy he depends on to keep his world spinning, to keep order for him, could not even remember her purse.

Ah, I thought.

This is the start of him finding out I’m not omnipotent. Not perfect. And also the start of me realizing that maybe he doesn’t need to know everything about me. Maybe I just give too much information sometimes.

By Marianne Lonsdale

Labels: By Marianne Lonsdale, Memory

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