MEMORY

1 a: the power or process of reproducing or recalling what has been learned and retained especially through associative mechanisms b: the store of things learned and retained from an organism's activity or experience as evidenced by modification of structure or behavior or by recall and recognition
2 something I once possessed (prior to having three children, of course)

Today, the girls and I arrived at a park at 3:30. One of A's former teachers was going to meet us there to catch up. This woman was A's first teacher and cared for and loved A from the tender stages of preschool through kindergarten. She is a quiet, gentle woman and she was a wonderful introduction for our family to the world of school. It's been a little over a year since we last saw each other and when she found me on Facebook (don't you love it when that happens?) we decided to meet to catch up.

So K and I picked A & B up from camp, drove to the sprayground, changed into swimsuits and waited. The girls got wet, cooled off and had a snack. I checked the time on my phone a few times and wondered where our friend was. After 45 minutes of playing (a full 30 minutes after our supposed meeting time), we loaded into the van and headed home for popsicles.

After cooling off with a sweet treat, I checked FB to see if there was a message telling me she couldn't meet today. What I saw instead was my original message to her where I gave her directions to the sprayground and I suggested that we meet at 3:30 on Wednesday. Today just happens to be Tuesday. So it's not a big shock that she didn't show up. What is a big shock is that I am able to function on a daily basis with so little short-term memory. If I don't write down a commitment, I am unlikely to keep it. The only good thing is that I won't feel guilty about failing someone because I won't remember that I didn't show up!

I really used to have an exceptional memory. I was good at remembering names and faces, events, conversations. I guess in some ways I still have a good memory: when I'm trying to recall a passage from a book, I can generally remember where on the page the text was (i.e. upper right or middle of the left page). While this comes in handy on ocassion, it would be far more helpful to retain pertinent information about times and dates. Alas, those are not things I can remember.

So if you're planning to schedule a date with me - or anyone in my family - you might want to kindly suggest that I write it down...