Are You Forgetting Things

Forgetting?

Here in the retirement home, who isn’t forgetting?

A few weeks ago I forgot to go to my book club. I love book club. The prevalence of active book clubs was one of the reasons I wanted to live here. I can’t believe I forgot book club. I think I just forgot that it was Thursday already.

This afternoon, while looking for something else (having forgotten where I put it), I found some notes I made attributing them to someone named Bill Murphy. I don’t mean to plagiarize your ideas, Bill, but I assume you meant for them to be passed on.

Bill said, according to my notes that maybe we need better lighting. He thinks, it seems, that we remember better things we saw in the light. Or, more basically, maybe that light just livens up our brains. I believe I do feel a little more dull in the dark.

Bill said also that we should play a lot of games, such as crossword puzzles. I assume he would approve of my learning in the past year to work Sudoku puzzles. I once thought, just because it was numbers, that I couldn’t, but I have moved past easy and medium and I am into hard puzzles, where I stumble and use my eraser rather frequently, but I know there are still harder ones coming.

Then he says some mysterious things, this anonymous friend, Bill. He says to try intermittent fasting. My previous efforts in that discipline have been outstanding failures. I do have an excuse, though. Last week I had a low blood sugar crisis just at the end of my supper and had to be rescued by a waitress who came running with the cheesecake. I am not sure what Bill expects fasting to do for my memory, and I can only promise to remember to eat on time and more carefully.

Then he suggests that we try walking backwards. Here in the retirement community a lot of us are not really good at walking forward, and I am not sure what our occupational therapists would say about walking without seeing where we are going. They are already horrified that I have an extension cord on the floor across a narrow space through which I sometimes need to walk, though I promise that the danger it presents has appeared in my thoughts every time I stepped across it (except once, in the dark, when I was half asleep, which is exactly what the therapist was worried about.) But, here at the expected end of this paragraph I am remembering something that may be relevant. I heard a concert pianist tell the audience that her teacher taught her to memorize the music backward and forward.

Bill also advocates eating more fruits and vegetables, and it does make sense, even to me, that if we are healthier our brains are more likely to function efficiently.

His next point is: read for pleasure. This is my favorite suggestion, because it is something I have always done, at least since the second grade. My Mother often said that she never asked me to do anything that I did not reply, “As soon as I finish this chapter.” That seems to imply that I found pleasure in reading. I don’t actually, however, know that I ever remembered at the end of the chapter what it was Mother wanted me to do.

I do understand why Bill urges us to “Get enough sleep.” When I don’t do that, I can’t for half a day remember anything, except how to make a cup of coffee.

“Develop detailed hobbies” is next on Bill’s list. That one sort of adds to my guilt that I didn’t go help the people who were making Christmas decorations. They used paper, just paper to make really beautiful shapes, suggesting wondrous things like stars and snowflakes. Just seeing all of these lovely three dimensional creations hanging around might have helped my memory, though, because I got out my manger scene and arranged the animals and the shepherds and wise men and their camels, all around the baby in the manger, and then I remembered Bethlehem, where the nice old Palestinian man carved each of these pieces from olive wood. And like me, he believed that Jesus was born right there, somewhere near where he worked every day. I will never be able to go there again, except by remembering, which, by the way, doesn’t cost anything, not a dollar.

At the end of my list of Bill Murphy’s suggestions, I wrote a note saying that I could get a free e-book: 13 Ways to Understand and Train Your Brain for Life. My note doesn’t say where to get it but I used Google and found the place easily. Bill wants $2.95 cents for the product of his work in neuroscience and surely giving our brains a lift is worth that much.

And probably the book will explain to us the benefits of walking backward. (Bill probably assumes you are smart enough to choose carefully the place where you practice this.)

Have fun.

Hmmm. Now that I think about it, I tend to remember fun things that happen. Maybe fun, too, does something for the memory.