A rose, a glove, a tree

...a dispatch from bewilderness

Memories are like a book that is not bound. If you place them on the porch, they may blow away. If you place them on the kitchen counter, they may blow away. 

The top pages will fly first, of course, and they are like short-term memories, things that just happened today or maybe yesterday.

And then the middle will fly, and then the last pages, which are the moments you thought you could never lose, the archive you chiseled, one finely sculpted piece at a time. The moments that mattered most.

A glove, a hat, a rose, a tree, a home, a book, a bird. First, the thing appears, then gets hazy and is gone.  Then the memory of it disappears, too, as if it were never there.

One moment and it was all gone, being a mom, and a mom to my mom, and being me, and the stories I would tell my grandchildren, should they arrive. One moment and the what-have-you-got-to-lose department was gone.

The stories, the moments, the memories? They seemed to atomize. Shot into space — terse and telegraphic — in a configuration that looked like Lake Brain-is-Gone. Among them, a glove, a hat, a rose.

Brain damage grows around you like fuzz or fur.  I am asked to count from 1-10 and name stuff I see on cards like a face, a hand, a tree, a car. It’s like I need nine ingredients for a recipe and I have three, or like I need twelve words for a thought, and I have five. Plus I’m scoring poorly in “comprehension,” “ideation,” and pouring juice in a glass. 

But there are a few good points, too. You can meet new friends, then meet them again five minutes later, when they’ll seem new again. Or throw your own surprise party and really be surprised. 

A tester asks me to explain what it means to bite a bullet. I can’t. She asks what it means to pull no punches. Means nothing to me. She tries armed to the teeth which makes me think of arms and teeth.  Not a good look.

Then she asks me what it means to bark up the wrong tree. This makes me happy as I love trees, but must also have made me look dreamy or blank, so she moves on and asks why people should not throw glass houses at stones.  I mean should not throw stones at glass houses.

I say, Because they break. I know what it means to break.