Mind Games

Mind Games
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published: Saturday August 15, 2015

I stood uneasily in the cavernous carpark, marooned in a concrete mausoleum. I steered my trolley left and right around grids of pillars and bays. No boxy black station wagon announced itself with the press of my key; no tail lights winked their happiness to see me. I had lost my car in the supermarket carpark. Separation anxiety set in.

After several more minutes of rising panic, I went into hyperdrive. ‘This can’t be happening,’ I chided myself. ‘How could I forget where I parked my car?’

I replayed my arrival an hour earlier: I’d driven off the street, down the ramp, turned left and lucked a space close to the escalator. My brain seized upon ‘escalator.’ That’s it! There are two them in this shopping centre: one at each end of the carpark. I was circling the wrong escalator.

I strode to the far end of the building. There – in exactly the spot I’d pictured – was my station wagon, rear end on display, nose to the wall. I felt a wave of relief. I loaded my groceries into the boot and drove up the exit ramp to breach the daylight. But a nagging sense of unease stayed with me all afternoon.

Is this how a mind starts slipping away? One lapse of concentration in an underground carpark and my memory had failed me. Had I reached that stage in life when forgetting becomes more important than remembering?

I grew up thinking mindlessness was an automatic condition of old age. Dementia stole my grandmother in her 80s; two uncles in their 70s. In recent years, Alzheimer’s has all but erased the sweetness of a favourite aunt. In our family, forgetting is a red flag.

In her 80th year, Mum’s memory has suddenly become an unreliable companion. Some days, forgetting becomes all-consuming. She is repeatedly distracted by the whereabouts of her keys, her wallet, her phone. Last Wednesday, I answered her mayday call and joined the search for her missing keys. We discovered them in the garden, plonked on the lid of the recycling bin.

“Now I remember!” she said. “It’s rubbish day. I had to unlock the side gate to bring the bins in.”

‘It’s no big deal, Ma,’ I said, noting her exasperation. “At least they weren’t in the bin!” She relaxed and gave me a hug. (In our house, keys favour the top shelf of the fridge, the laundry bench and the window sill above the loo.)

I worry Mum’s fickle memory will sabotage her fierce independence. Already, she’s painfully aware of the small gaps appearing in her daily routines.

“Do I need to take these pills here?” she wonders aloud as she make me a cup of tea. “What are these white ones for anyway?”

She tells me how on bad days, tiredness dims her mind and makes her conversation flabby and repetitive. She describes her frustration when mid-sentence, a word sits just out of reach, refusing to come when called for.

“That’s when I’ll say something stupid,” she says, “trying to cover up my embarrassment.”

“It happens to everybody,” I reassure her. I’m already an expert at clumsy word spillage.

I notice Mum is now clinging to her diary. It’s her antidote to forgetting: a painstakingly transcribed almanac of appointments and errands, birthdays and passwords. Her diary is stuffed with letters and receipts – life’s paperwork, held together with an elastic-band.

“Just a minute,” she’ll say down the phone, when I suggest we meet for lunch. “Let me write that down.” Remembering has become hard work but forgetting has not slowed her down.

She’s still the gadabout she’s always been. Her life is a whirlwind of coffees and dinners and concerts. Her evening constitutional is a seven kilometre bike ride, or an hour’s walk along the beach. She catches the train to every Eagles home game. Afterwards, hoarse from barracking, she’ll take herself off to dinner ‘somewhere nice.’ She’d walk home in the dark if we’d let her.

Now and then, we sit together in a windowless waiting room, hoping a doctor will give her pockmarked memory a name. “Nothing wrong here,” they’ll say, inspecting the report from her latest scan. “Age-related memory loss, we call it. Getting old’s no fun, is it?”

“Better than the alternative,” she shoots back, enjoying her joke.

Last week, as she waltzed in our back door to join us for dinner, I asked if she’d remembered to put her bins out.

She smiled and settled herself onto a stool.

“Nope,” she said. “Remind me again when I leave.” She leant over and whispered to my youngsters. “At least I’ve never forgotten where I parked my car.” The kids snickered.

“Pretty funny for a Tuesday night, aren’t you Ma,” I said, dishing out the casserole. And then I faltered, spoon in mid-air. “It is Tuesday, right?”

Down Memory Lame

Down Memory Lame
Ros Thomas
The Weekend West
Published Saturday June 29, 2013

I have been cursed with forgetting. I forget new names and old acquaintances. I forget what people do and who they’re doing it with. I have sudden panics at the supermarket when a face I know (attached to a name I don’t) stops me at the fish counter: “How are you? It’s been ages! Have you seen any of the gang lately?”

Gang? With rising panic, I point to the seafood display and launch headlong into an embarrassing non sequitur: “No, I haven’t seen the gang lately, but hey! Have you ever seen such sad little prawns, I bet they got bullied at school for being shrimps!” Good grief! – I keep up this moronic prattle whilst simultaneously pleading with my brain to please, please deliver the name of this person. Then at least I can spare her (and me) the agony of my tediously inane small talk.

Suddenly the penny drops and I blurt out: “So, Penny! How are the girls at Pilates?” Gotcha! The relief is instant. For the next thirty seconds I say Penny’s name in every sentence. Our conversation becomes the festival of Penny from Pilates. She seems pleased. Penny and I part ways with a girly kiss and I promise to go to class more than once a month. As I walk back to the car, I begin a mantra of repeating her name over and over in my head. I pray ‘Penny from Pilates’ sticks firmly in there somewhere for next time.

I’ve always been conversationally absent-minded. But I’m getting worse after four decades of meeting people. What if my forgetting is laziness? What if I am just not paying enough attention to what people tell me?

Would it be less awkward to admit: “I’m really sorry, but who are you and how do you fit into my life?” But then I realise I’m not ready to be a social pariah.  

I have the same problem with reading. My book collection is a vast catalogue of forgetting. I was enthralled by “Cloudstreet” yet retained virtually nothing of the experience. I can give you a line about the plot, (neighbours) and the locale (West Leederville, wasn’t it?). Maybe a character’s name if I’m lucky (Rose Pickles?). But my affection for Cloudstreet is nothing more memorable than a warm feeling. Ask me about books I’ve devoured and all I can give you is a vague idea of a story “liked”, “loved” or “hated.”

Forgetting has consequences for my vanity, too. Deep in conversation with someone cleverer than me, I’m holding my own nicely when suddenly, I’m unable to pluck the word I need from the left side of my head. Inwardly cursing, outwardly stammering, my unfinished sentence hangs in the air. My listener kindly tries to fill the awkward silence by changing the subject, but our conversation has lost its momentum and lurches to an uncomfortable end. We make our excuses, and I slink away, mortified.

Yet I can reel off reams of useless trivia, without even trying. I can recall watching a documentary that said Charlie Chaplin once entered himself in a look-alike competition and came third. I can tell you that no matter how high you throw an egg, it will never break if it lands on grass. (We just tried it at the park). I can remember my school project from year 5 revealing cows have no front teeth.  And I know no-one can lick their elbow. 

But can I remember to dress my 6-year-old lad in a beret and moustache for school French day? Nope. And that’s after reading the note from his teacher a fortnight ago and writing a reminder in big red letters in my diary. Let’s just say I forgot to check my diary. A small boy rolled up to school in his regulation blue shorts and white shirt to be met by a crowd of petits enfants oozing Gallic charm. I made a mad dash home to fetch sobbing child a stripey Breton shirt and a jaunty knotted scarf and missed my Pilates class with Penny.

Lately I seem to be unable to picture my children as babies. This frustration is particularly acute with my eldest. As a toddler, I knew every dimple and freckle on his little face by heart. I thought I would never forget the sight of him crawling commando down the hallway. Or how at age five, he would slurp jelly through the two-finger gap in his teeth. Now I can only summon the 13 years of memories by consulting photographs or watching old home movies. My mind will not reproduce even the things dearest to me.

Is there a remedy for forgetfulness? I’m yet to find it, though I know paragons of memory who swear by Sudoko and crosswords. And bridge. The closest I’ve come to mentally stimulating card games is Strip Jack Poker. Come to think of it, I’ve never forgotten anyone I played that with.