Wish I could remember what I had to tell you

The Boston Herald

Beverly Beckham

"The Dairy Queen has, what do you call those things?" Ron asks his wife of 36 years.

"McFlurries?"

"No. No. It's a 'd' word."

"T? Tiramisu?"

"Not 't,' Maryann! 'D.' "

Ron and Maryann are visiting from Alabama. They are in the family room sitting on the couch eating Healthy Choice Coffee Almond Fudge ice cream. The Healthy Choice apparently has triggered memories of a less healthy choice. The subject of the Dairy Queen has come out of nowhere.

"Help me with this, Maryann. We're a team, here. I know you know what I'm thinking."

They study each other with the intensity of people who suddenly find themselves partners on "Password." This is followed by silence. Then, almost on cue, Maryann's face lights up and she shouts "Dillies!" as confident as a woman shouting Bingo.

"No. No. No," Ron says, bursting her bubble. "It's not dillies. It's, it's, IT'S A BLIZZARD!"

Of course, it is, though Blizzard doesn't begin with a "D," as Maryann is quick to point out.

" 'D' 'B' - they're close enough," Ron says.

They go back to eating their ice cream.

Ten minutes later, Ron is looking for his keys.

"Do you have them, Maryann?"

"Did you give them to me?"

"I don't know. I thought I did."

"Let me look in my pocketbook."

The keys are found, though not in Maryann's pocketbook, but in her jacket pocket.

"I must have put them there," she says.

"I must have handed them to you."

"It takes two of us to find things lately."

"And two of us to remember names."

Ron and Maryann fly home to Mobile, and I go for a walk with my friend, Beth. Near the end of the walk, I say, "When we get to your house, I need to remember two things." I recite the two things out loud so that she knows what they are. I think about adding, "How about if you remember one thing and I remember the other," but I know that this is absurd because we are so near her house that there isn't time enough for either of us to forget.

We forget anyway. We remember one of the things but not the other, and try as we may, (Did it have to do with the kids? Work? Was it about a book or a CD?) this very important, how-could-we-forget-it thing eludes us.

It returns as dramatically as it disappeared, about 10 minutes later while Beth is driving me home. Suddenly it's right there, as real as rabbits pulled from a magician's hat, occupying a space that was empty just seconds before. How does this happen and why and never mind about age and overload and having more important things on our minds?

We had nothing more important than remembering these two things! So how could we forget? Why does a mature mind insist on playing this child's game of hide and seek?

I am about to walk into a store I've been in 20 or 30 times and suddenly I can't remember the name of the owner.

I am telling a story and I reach for an ordinary word and as I go to grab it, it turns into vapor, disappearing like steam from a kettle.

I know the mind will collect it and it will become liquid again. Words come back. Names return, but on their timetable, not mine.

And in the interim? There are awkward moments. "I'd like you to meet my good friend, um . . ."

"The telephone is for . . . her," you yell at a party, pointing across a room.

"You'll never guess who I ran into yesterday," you begin and the name you had on your tongue bolts behind a door, leaving you standing there hemming and hawing.

"If someone thinks they have a memory problem it's probably normal and benign because they remember that they're not remembering," attests memory expert, Liz Taylor, who should not be confused with the actress Liz Taylor, who obviously has some memory problems of her own, because, let's face it, shouldn't she have remembered about five marriages ago, that marriage isn't such a good choice for her?

Forgetting a "good friend's name" or "where we put the car keys," insists this other Liz Taylor, is simply "normal forgetfulness."

Great. I can hardly wait for the next social encounter (read social gaffe) to feel normal again.