cosmicomedy:
the persistence of memory
by lavinia plonka

Scarecrow: “They took my arm and they threw it over there! And then they took my legs and threw them over there!”

Tin Man: “That’s you all over.”

I have several vivid memories of forgetting. The first one was about age eight. My mother had discovered the Sears outlet and we were diving into bins of underwear like pirates into a treasure chest. “Mine, all mine.” I clutched all the new panties my chubby fingers could grab. Never again would I worry about being in a car accident and having the hospital staff cluck cluck over my ragged briefs. I could move on to more weighty subjects like ending the Cold War or how I could con my father into more spare change so I could win the Mission Money collection contest and get a glimmer of approval from Sister Giovanni.

As we stood at the check out, my mother looked at me with a rare smile, clutching her lace trimmed slip with the adjustable straps. Then she got the look: eyes bulging, eyebrows raised, head forward. She hissed, “Where is your pocketbook?” In the orgy of new lingerie, I had misplaced my first, my best, my only pocketbook, a red patent leather fantasy with a cool clasp that you turned. The blood drained from my face. I had $3 in that purse. My mother tore out of the line, dragging me back through disgruntled women who were busy burying themselves in discounted blouses. We tore the underwear bin apart. Looked through all the socks. Tears streaked my desperate face. This was it. I’d never have a pocketbook again. Let alone cash. A woman approached us, holding my little purse. “Did you lose this, little girl?” she asked kindly. My mother thanked her profusely and turned to me. “What are we going to do with you? I swear you’d forget your head if it wasn’t attached!”

Shortly after that, I lost the pocketbook again. Terrified that my mother would find out, I resorted to supernatural help, earnestly beseeching St. Anthony, the Catholic Patron Saint of Lost and Found, to help me remember where I put it. A few days later, I found it in the attic in our cool junk bin. I never told my mother. I was sure St. Anthony had put it there for me to find. I would have never done that.

Since then, I have left my purse at parties, in shopping carts, in cabs and in restaurants. I rack my brains to try to retrace my steps, to remember where it may have gone astray, then finally turn to my patron saint. Only then do I remember. It is a vivid experience, as if suddenly, everything has come together. Like the Scarecrow, my parts were scattered, and now I’ve reconnected the neurons that keep my thoughts together, my head on my shoulders, my purse beside me.

A woman’s purse is like a limb, sometimes even forming a hollow in the shoulder from the years of hauling apparently unnecessary things. Then comes that moment when someone says, “Does anyone have a nail file, bandaid, lozenge, mint, hairbrush, tampon, aspirin, pen, the Yellow Pages, a map of the NYC Subway system, the original 8 track of Helen Redding’s I Am Woman, the solution to the world energy crisis?” And you casually root around in your purse, muttering something like, “I think I have one in here somewhere,” producing the requested item to the delight and surprise of the onlookers. Unfortunately, this magic does not work when you are looking through the same collection of items for your keys as the rain is pouring down, a strange man has followed you into the parking lot and you have paper shopping bags you can’t put down. It’s a mystery.

When I have the opportunity to travel somewhere without my purse, there is inevitably a moment where I stop dead, trying to figure out what’s missing. What have I forgotten? And sometimes, I have my purse, but I’m so used to carrying it, that I forget it’s there. “Oh my god, I forgot my….oh, heh heh, here it is.” Men are no exception to this phenomenon. I’ve watched my husband Ron, an endless source of entertainment, ransack the house looking for the glasses perched on his head.

Neuroscientists are always poking around in our heads trying to find our memories. Some speak about the functioning of the amygdala, a tiny little part of the brain that seems to store the unforgettable memories. I’ve hoped that I could delete some of my old memories so that there might be room on that little hard drive for remembering names of people I meet and recent conversations. Surely there is no reason to keep remembering the time I forgot about a concert engagement and got a call from the stage manager asking me where I was. Or that pre-pubescent period when I decided that my parents couldn’t possibly be my real parents and I renamed myself Sredni Vastar after a ferret in a short story by Saki.

Then there’s the myelin—the fatty protein coating on the neurons. Apparently this carries information through the nervous system. There’s even a theory that low fat diets can cause myelin loss. So now I eat butter and say I’m feeding my neurons.

Muscle memory is bandied about as the reason certain habits don’t quit, like the limp that remains years after a sprained ankle. I once had a student whose ribs were held as tightly as armor. All attempts to introduce movement came to a dead end. “It’s muscle memory,” she announced.

“Oh, were you injured there?” I asked.

“No, it’s from the corset.”

“Corset?” I didn’t quite understand.

“In my last life, I had to wear a corset. It was during the 19th century you see.” I can’t remember where I put my keys, and she can remember her last life. Where is the fairness in this? Then again, I’d hate to imagine the state of her amygdala.

When I was a girl, I had no idea that my Mother, who had survived capture by the Nazis, had Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Neither did she, since we’d never heard of it. I did not understand that certain triggers catapulted her brain’s hard drive into replaying scenes from the war. Whenever my father was even a minute late from work, no matter what the weather, she’d put on her coat and hat, grab her purse and start walking the streets looking in the gutters for his dead body. It was really embarrassing when people brought her home. Even worse, my Father, coming home minutes later, would launch into violent cursing as he tore out of the house looking for her.

So one day, we hid her purse. She tore the house apart, then collapsed on the couch. Instantly, my 7 year old sister, my 2 year old brother, who thought it was a marvelous game, and I jumped on her, pinning her to the couch,. “Where is my pocketbook?” she wailed, “What have you done with my pocketbook?” By the time my father got home, five minutes later, we were all sobbing on the couch. My Mother still never leaves the house without her purse.

But what really mystifies me the most is when I forget myself. It can happen at any moment. I’ll be driving down the highway, and suddenly realize that I’m on 26 heading for Hendersonville, when I was just taking a trip to Earth Fare. Or I’m walking along a beach, so deeply in conversation with an imagined adversary that suddenly I say out loud, “I really don’t think so,” just as I pass an elderly man who looks at me pityingly. For a split second, I experience clarity, like the moment I remembered where I left my purse. Except in this case, it wasn’t my purse that got forgotten somewhere, it was me. My thoughts are in the past or the future, my body is scattered all over town, and then whoosh! Everything comes back together, I am re-membered. I reach into my purse for my notebook to jot down this moment of enlightenment. As I grope, I realize my wallet is not in my purse. I left it on the kitchen counter. Thank goodness that at the bottom of my pocketbook is at least $4 in change from the time I forgot to properly close my change purse…..

When not looking for her purse, Lavinia can be found teaching the Feldenkrais Method®, a supremely elegant approach to improving quality of life through movement. She is the director of the Asheville Movement Center and teaches internationally.
[ laviniaplonka.com ]