Forgetfulness and motherhood go hand in hand

Guest Commentary
October 4, 2006

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The process of losing my memory began with the birth of my first child. Each subsequent child and each passing year compounded the problem and confounded me.

My children think I've always been spacey. That's all they've known.

But I remember that I used to remember things.

My mother, on the other hand, was always forgetting what I considered important details, like what night I had practice or had to stay late or needed a permission slip signed or the names of my new friends.

I never equated her lack of memory with motherhood.

But years later when I'd see the look of annoyance on my children's faces after I'd neglected to pick them up at the right time or fill out some paperwork they needed or forgot someone's name or a detail they'd told me, the truth became clear.

Sunday as my two daughters, my grandson and I headed off to the mall for an afternoon of shopping, my daughter (my grandson's mother) saw the light, as well.

When I accelerated to merge into traffic, we heard a thumping noise on the top of the car. My daughter looked out the back window in time to see her cell phone smash into tiny silver pieces on the road behind us.

"Oops," she said. "I think I left my phone on top of the car when I buckled the baby into his car seat."

She shook her head.

"I can't remember anything since I had the baby."

I smiled.

She smiled.

Her sister looked at us and said, "I'm in real trouble if it gets worse after having children."

Though not scientifically proven, I have a theory there's a correlation between having children and the loss of memory.

I liken it to a scene in Stephen King's novel and movie "Dreamcatcher," in which one character visualizes his memories as a giant repository with multiple floors of files marked according to his specifications.

When he needs one, he simply walks through the rows looking for the right folder.

In the story, aliens take over humans' minds and bodies and assume their identities. He protects his by taking the most important files into a locked room.

Perhaps his strategy would have worked for me had I recognized that my storage area was full in time to do something. Instead, I'm convinced that the details of raising children simply overfilled my file room, and old records had to be purged to make room for new ones. And because I was always busy, new records didn't always get put in their proper place. Memories that should have gone in the "important" rack got stuffed between the "things to do next week" and "interesting-but-not-critical" files.

Some simply disappeared in the vast library of life.

I'd like to say eventually, after life calmed down and the children went off on their own, I cleaned off the dust and cobwebs and alphabetized all those files I dumped in my brain to be sorted later.

But I think too much time passed and I've simply lost them altogether.

Fortunately, I was fanatical about taking photographs and saving important mementos.

So despite my lack of memories, my children have permanent records of important events in their lives.

And I remember the things that matter: their births, moments of cuddling up with a book at bedtime, watching them play games, leave for that first dance, graduate, pack up to leave home, unpack to visit home and tell me they love me.

After all, those are the memories that really count anyway.

Not being able to find my car keys or my reading glasses or failing to take out the trash on my day is a small price to pay for having them in my life.

Kim Spencer was city editor of the Greeley Tribune. She is now a journalism instructor at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.