Tonight's Poet Corner: Memory & Me

Memory & Me
by Belinda Roddie

I have captured moments in amber. Not just
the happy or sentimental ones; also the ones
with teeth marks on them, with bruises
and scrapes. I don't always remember if
I've locked the door of my classroom, and I
have to trudge my way back across campus just
so I can feel the cold, stiff beak of the door knob
refuse to squawk. But I remember the time I

somersaulted over the handlebars of my bicycle
when I was thirteen, tattooing both my hands
with canvassed scars. I remember the first time
I felt dirty water splash against my knees on the river
rafting ride at Great America - I think I was
eight years old, or maybe I was nine. I remember
when I was definitely eight years old, and I
accidentally drank an entire cup of bright
purple fluoride at the dentist's office, and I had
to keep the rising bile down so I didn't projectile
vomit in my mother's neon green Dodge minivan.

The first memory I have is of me at
age two filling up my diaper, emptying
my pudgy, bulging-eyed body of its inner
demons. Yes, the first thing I remember
doing is shitting myself. I take my sharp
memory for granted. I can call back snippets
of dialogue I've shared with friends, recite lines
from films and books by heart. I provide
my audience random shards of trivia that I've
collected like beach glass on a restless shore.
Did you know that Randy Johnson killed a
bird with a baseball pitch? Rosalind Franklin
was the one who actually discovered the double
helix of DNA. Adolf Hitler had just one testicle!

I know how awkward it can be at family dinners
to ask my mother if she recalls the time she wore
the same school sweatshirt as my twin sister
at a Catholic mass in the outdoors of Cazadero,
and they goofily marveled at how much they
looked like twins; and she gives me that blank
stare, that amused lopsided grin, as if I've just
presented my family once again with a quirk or
an idiosyncrasy as natural and as peevish as biting
nails or cracking knuckles. The memories are as
ingrained into my body as ink is on a piece of paper.

But ink, after a while, starts to fade, and it doesn't
hold as much weight on greasy, yellowing parchment
that gets too old and too fragile to hold without
worrying that it'll dissolve in your hands like bones.
Is my memory so good if one day, I don't even recall
losing it? Two Christmases ago, I shook the hand
of an aged gentleman who I knew at the senior living
center. He looked me up and down in my black
blazer and red vest - the festive one with the Scottie
in a brightly patterned sweater - and he beamed
through his wrinkles, asking to everyone and
no one: "Now, where have I seen this handsome

man before?" Witnessing the hippocampus
stripped of its clothing, left bare and shivering
as all of the bits and pieces it has collected
scatter, reminds me of how lucky I am to have
the brain that I do. Seeing someone dying

of Alzheimer's is not like in the movies, where the
sentimentality is laid on thick and sweet, like honey
on toast, the heaviness evident in the skewed
message of hope, of one last communication
through a telephone wire before it turns into

twine tied onto a tin can. Losing your mind
is not romantic - slowly, inch by inch, cut
like ribbons of life by the blades of the Fates.
I see the fear stained on the faces of these people's
children, their grandchildren, as they watch the
stem of the flower wither before the petals do,
as they dwell on the implications of their own
realities being warped by the cackling of an

inherited prion. I remember sitting at the dining
room table, watching a loved one being served
hot cherry pie for his eighty-fifth birthday, reminded
to wait before eating his slice so he didn't burn
his mouth. I remember when an old lady wondered
out loud why the movie we were watching was such
a slog, timed at a little over two hours, her eyes glazed
over at the sight of princes on horseback and giants
crushing maidens under moss-plagued feet. I remember
when an old man fulfilled his dream of dancing

at his granddaughter's wedding, dressed in a classic
tuxedo, swaying in his daughter's arms in that
air-conditioned room with the tiny dance floor,
his face still red and scabbed from falling nose first
into an ocean of angry concrete. I remember that he
didn't remember that wish, and that he had no interest
in accepting his disease, and that he shrugged off
the fear of losing his sense of past, present, and future.
And I guess that paid off because now I don't think
he even remembers his fear of forgetting.

Living in the moment means nothing if we don't recall
how we got there. The moment becomes garbled
and turns to static. The words blend together into
satellite calls that we can't translate into our mother
tongue. Who we were before shapes who we've

become, and without the were, who are we? We

become the ghosts of performances we don't

remember rehearsing. Memories weave our

tapestries - without them, we're just sad, gray

thread without shape or form. If I couldn't

bring back the moment I came out to my friends
while they played video games on the dirty couch in
our college apartment when I was twenty-one. If
I couldn't recollect the tears on my wife's face
after she read me her personal vows in her poofy
white gown in front of that gazebo at the art and garden
center. If I couldn't force to mind what I fucking

ate for breakfast that morning, or whether or
not I kissed my darling goodbye before leaving for
work. Minds without memories are hollow, questions
misfiring in a dark cave where no one can hear
you. Plato's allegory never felt so appropriate,
watching shadows on the wall - but you could
forget all about them, too, couldn't you?

To this day, I am scared of forgetting. I am

scared that my gray matter will erode to
the point where I am no longer recognizable.
I don't want my wife's smile to be as unfamiliar
as a painting in a museum. I don't want my own
reflection in the mirror to look foreign. Love

doesn't feel the same when you don't know who
it's supposed to be directed to. Poetry can't be written
when you can't digest the language in your own
abyss of a stomach. I know how frightened
I am of not remembering. Who I am, what I do,
what I dream, all of them are linked to my ability
to retrace my steps. And I know for him, it was the
same way. But the old man's no longer scared

of forgetting. Like I said, he's forgotten his fear.
And his shame. And that time he ate cold butter
on its own at the Italian restaurant on Christmas
night, which didn't bother me. Because I did
the same thing when I was six, of my own volition,
much to my parents' confusion and chagrin.