Yesterday? Today?

Abigail Thomas

Word Count 749

I don’t remember ever being lost, but my memory is full of holes, and it might have slipped through. A couple of years ago, I went so far as to imagine hopping in the car and getting lost on purpose to see what it felt like. That’s an odd thought for a woman in her eighties. Maybe I’d been lost as a child and found my own way home and wanted to relive the triumph. You’d think something like that would stick. Because why remember what I do remember? A million tiny details of no consequence. Eating blue popsicles in New Orleans; the street where we lived was paved with shells; our pear tree hung over a bend in the road, dropped its fruit into a blizzard of yellowjackets; the first time I ever babysat, the mother had made her young children a cheese souffle.

The other day someone asked me what kind of child I’d been. I have no idea.

Of course, there are tricks. If I had an old blue jar of Noxzema and took a sniff, I’d be seventeen years old on the beach in Amagansett, and Buddy Cox, whom I don’t yet know, will follow me into the water. (Actually, just thinking about it takes me back those sixty-five years). As for the future, what’s left of it anyway, I never think further ahead than to make sure I have coffee for tomorrow.

If something is in my hand and I put it down, chances are it’s gone forever. Even if it was three minutes ago. Especially if it’s three minutes ago. I rarely look for things, lest I be thwarted. And I can’t always remember what I want to retrieve, take another look at, or give away to one of my kids. There are a couple of things that I’m certain of finding. My old poems and stories are stuffed into an empty filing cabinet where they have been since I moved here twenty-some years ago. I like going through them once in a while, then very carefully putting them back. My favorite earrings are in my eyeglass case, along with my eyeglasses. I don’t know how they got there, but so far, they have not wandered off. My pens are in a side drawer of the desk, along with everything else I might need on an average morning. Rubber bands, bobby pins, and a comb. Other stuff. An unopened bottle of Folic acid. I forget what it’s for. Old lipsticks. A magnifying glass I use when everything is too small.

One night I was losing my mind because I couldn’t find my father’s old papers, long yellow legal pads covered with his almost illegible handwriting--notes for books, ideas for essays, the essays themselves, old letters, quite a few poems, they were precious and nowhere, and my daughter Catherine said, “Mom, Go to bed. I promise I will find them tomorrow.” Lo and behold, she did. Lifting a comforter off a chair nobody sits in, there they were. Maybe all I lack is a little faith.

But the worst is that I never know how much of Monday will make it into Tuesday, or Tuesday into Wednesday, and so on. It is possible –even likely--that I will forget who was here today, what we talked about, and how hard we laughed. A lot can disappear overnight. It’s happened before. Huge chunks gone. I could make myself sick with fear that one day I might lose my whole self, but I’ve decided there is another way to look at this. I am living in the moment, but I’m not marooned here. (Beautiful word, marooned.) Moments come in different sizes and colors, I never know what the next one will reveal, suggest, or keep hidden. And it’s never boring.

Like right now, all those tiny things from before are flying around in my head. Even the babysitting. I feel strangely sorry for the mother making souffles for her little children. And maybe our street was paved with shells because rain often overflowed the curbs in New Orleans, and shells made for better drainage. I don’t know. It’s funny that I don’t remember ever being hot. And popsicles were a nickel.

I almost forgot the lizards. If you caught one by the tail, the tail came right off in your hand. The lizard escaped and grew a new one. So cool. It’s two a.m. But I don’t have to be anywhere tomorrow. Wait. What is tomorrow?

Abigail has four children, twelve grandchildren, one great-grandchild, two dogs, and a high school education. Her books include Safekeeping; A Three Dog Life; and What Comes Next and How to Like It. Her new book, Still Life At Eighty, is out now on The Golden Notebook Press. She lives in Woodstock, NY.