When my oldest was five, we celebrated by taking her to Disneyland and Seaworld. Although it wasn’t as expensive as it is now, we had saved because it was a special occasion. We had a wonderful time, but years later, she doesn’t remember the trip. She remembers seeing pictures and us telling stories about it, but she doesn’t remember the trip itself. I don’t fault her and understand when she, and others, claim that five year olds don’t remember these things. My problem is that I am comparing her to me, and the fact that I have memories going back to when I was three, maybe as far back as two and a half. I thought everyone remembered things that far back. But it goes further than that. Oldest won’t remember what happened earlier in the day. There are numerous examples of this and it has become something of a family joke. I got so frustrated with her not remembering things, that I would make up trips. “Don’t you remember when we went to the Amazon for your 10th birthday?” I’d ask her, or “we had the best time skiing down glaciers in Canada last year!”
Then the funniest thing happened. She is majoring in Anthropology and wanted to tell me about some really cool facts she learned about the indigenous Ancestral Pueblo people that lived in Colorado around 600 CE.
“Ok,” I said. I love early American history (all history, really).
“They lived in pit houses,” she told me.
“Ok,” I replied. This sounded familiar.
“They would dig ventilation shafts so the smoke wouldn’t fill the house!”
“Like the ones we saw at Mesa Verde?”
*silence*
In 2020 – COVID be damned – we flew to Salt Lake City and went on a road trip. One of the places where we ended up was Mesa Verde in Colorado. We saw the cliff dwellings – from a distance – and also observed … pit houses with ventilation shafts.
She didn’t remember that. However, she did remember the deer that was wandering around the excavated pit house.
So this leads me to her 19th birthday present. I decided to circle back to the imaginary places we traveled to. And she knows her memory is – questionable – so I like to think it wasn’t picking on her, but having fun with her. The following are some pictures from her “Memory Book” for her birthday. And as part of the joke, I cut out actual photos of her and glued them to the picture to make it look as good as the really bad fake ID’s we had in the ‘80’s. (Not me, I was a good kid!) We can credit my creative writing degree for the captions.
*For anyone seriously worried about her mental state, we are actually going to send a note to her doctor and explore it further. It may be an ADD thing or just part and parcel of being a young person in 21st century America. She is brilliant and hilarious and because of this I’m not terribly worried. She was part of a dual-credit program in high school and graduated with her diploma and AA (magna cum laude) and entered UNR as a junior. So whatever is going on doesn’t affect her academics. But anyone who wants to share anecdotal life experiences on the topic of forgetfulness is welcome!
Mom Solo 