Some Thoughts

I've been reading a book about a man who is in a nursing home and he starts reminiscing about when he was younger. The chapters go back and forth between the nursing home and the 1930s. I liked the beginning of Chapter One (I included an excerpt below - it's a long couple of paragraphs, but good). This is happening to me already! The magic age for me used to be "24" (now that I'm 30, and starting a new decade, it's easier to remember-we'll see what happens in a few years). Whenever anybody asked me my age, I would instinctively say "24." Then, I would think about it and realize that I was actually 27 or 29. I think my subconscious said "24" because that is how old I was when Austin was born. Maybe my life as I knew it ended at "24", or maybe my life as what I was meant to be (starting the most important "job" of my life) began at "24", or maybe I left my memory at "24." It seems like with every baby, I give up a little bit more of my mind. My mom says that the baby sucks everything good out of you while it is growing inside of you, and that includes your memory. Whatever it was...I found these paragraphs very true!

For example:

• I constantly call Macy either Maddie or Molly (no more "M" names for our family), Macy and Paige are interchangeable, and Austin frequently becomes Greg (it doesn't help that he's the spitting image of his dad).
• Greg even does it! He tells people all the time that we were married in 2001. This presents a problem, because we were actually married in 1999 and Austin was born in 2001. Sorry if he gave any of you the wrong idea!

Excerpt from "Water for Elephants":

"I am ninety. Or ninety-three. One or the other. When you're five, you know your age down to the month. Even in your twenties you know how old you are. I'm twenty-three, you say, or maybe twenty-seven. But then in your thirties something strange starts to happen. It's a mere hiccup at first, an instant of hesitation. How old are you? Oh, I'm-you start confidently, but then you stop. You were going to say thirty-three, but you're not. You're thirty-five. And then you're bothered, because you wonder if this is the beginning of the end. It is, of course, but it's decades before you admit it.

You start to forget words: they're on the tip of your tongue, but instead of eventually dislodging, they stay there. You go upstairs to fetch something, and by the time you get there you can't remember what it was you were after. You call your child by the names of all your other children and finally the dog before you get to his. Sometimes you forget what day it is. And finally you forget the year."

Some adorable reasons for my memory loss: