Personal News

...A dispatch from bewilderness

a birthday card from me to me

In my first life, I worked for magazines and closed the refrigerator. In this life, I don't. I put dishes in the dishwasher and remembered to take them out. I had phones I could find, and when they rang, I answered them.

It was easy. I did the same assignments as men who weren't mommies to their kids – or their mom – while getting bills paid, meals made, homework done, baths taken, stories read, prayers said. I just riffed, ad-libbed, invented, put food on the table, clothes in the wash, then riffed, ad-libbed and went to bed.

I got paid to write hundreds of thousands of words for 23 magazines, two film companies, and four TV networks. I was prolific, sprouting with gusto, sort of like weeds. I spoke in the voices of clients. Like Martha or Oprah. Someone who sounded just right. Someone who got things right. This was useful. As said, I got paid.

That was then. This is now. I’m in Neuro Testing. The tester says “Boat, car, hammer” and asks me to repeat what I heard. I say hammer. The tester asks something else, but I’m thinking of a woman with one leg. I saw her standing on a traffic median a few decades ago.

There are 2,130,000 types of memory. Here are two. Declarative memory is recall of facts, dates, words, faces, events, and concepts, like your child’s name. Procedural memory is how to do things like get up and down steps. That’s useful, too.

My cognitive architecture —  otherwise known as the history with which I made sense of the world — blew apart. Other than that, everything’s fine. Except if I watch the news. Which I’ve been avoiding. Here’s some very personal news. My birthday is Tuesday and, by avoiding mirrors much of the time, I mostly don’t feel as old as I am.