"Of all the things I've lost, I miss my mind the most."
Just a bumper sticker to most of you. But to so many women I know, it is the sad epitaph on their lives.
Somewhere between the hot tub and the car pool, we got stupid. Can't remember a thing. Except what it was like when we were single and witty and in command of our lives. And when we can remember to do so, we grieve for that time.
"I like to think it's a matter of over-scheduling," says my friend Nan, who has to carry the sticky, empty toothpaste tube downstairs and to the kitchen so that she will remember to write "toothpaste" on her grocery list.
"I like to think that when our children are grown, it will all come back to us."
No chance. Scientists who study the brain agree that brain cells are lost or shrink as we age and certain functions, particularly memory, fade. Just like those keg parties in college, these are the best times of our lives, and we won't remember a thing about them.
"Your brain only has so much holding capacity," my sister Cynthia reasons. "You have to dump something if you want to make room for something else."
That's why Cynthia can keep the inventory of her pantry in her head, but she can't remember anything that happened to her in high school.
"I was looking at my yearbook the other day, thinking, 'Whose life was this?' " she says. "But I can tell you how much toilet paper I have left."
Cynthia has to do the same task on the same day every week if she wants to remember to do it at all. "I have to change the beds on Monday or I will go through the week thinking I have already done it."
She told me that she never calls her children by their correct names, and when I told her not to worry, we all mix up our children's names, she said, "No. I call them by the names of children I don't even have."
My women friends also have trouble mixing and mingling words. Nan is always saying mushroom when she means marshmallow. My friend Susan asked me about the yogurt on my daughter's foot. She meant warts. I knew what she meant, and so I answered, "Fine, the doctor says two more treatments."
We can't even talk, and we still understand each other.
My friend Betsy invites people to coffee and forgets and leaves to do errands. None of us takes it personally anymore. She used to be great at remembering birthdays. Now, she simply writes, "Hope you had a great birthday" on her Christmas cards.
My friend Susan finds herself looking in the fridge for stuff that isn't stored there, like glue or her checkbook. And she has to ask her children what it was she told them to remember.
Are we old or are we just busy? Yes. But lists, calendars and piles help us feel young and organized. Sometimes.
One friend has three calendars, but can never find any of them. Another has one calendar on which all her children's activities are written in color codes, but she never looks at it. I once wrote 7:30 on Dec. 6 but did not record where I was supposed to be. What an awful feeling that was.
Women also use piles. Piles of bills to pay, papers to read today, papers to read later, papers to file. Piles of things to be returned to neighbors, piles of things to go upstairs, piles of things to go downstairs. Piles of clothing to repair.
When I complained to a friend that I still had a pair of shorts on my pile of mending and here it was January, she said, "I can beat that. I have 4T clothes in my mending pile, and I just bought Jack a pair of size-10 men's tennis shoes."
Lists. They are our last line of defense. Grocery lists. Lists of phone calls to make. Lists of chores to do inside the home, lists of errands to do in the car. If I ever lost my calendar and my lists, my life would stop. I would not know where to go or what to do when I got there.
"I thought I was bad because I could never remember what I had to buy at the grocery store without my list," says my friend Wendy. "Then I drove off and left the groceries at the store."
I was feeling sorry for myself when I found a grocery list in a jacket I had not worn for a year. "What a dull life," I thought. "I'm buying exactly the same groceries this week that I was buying a year ago."
Confusion gripped me, and I thought, "Oh no. Maybe this is this week's grocery list."