patchy

i've been having more "senior moments" lately.  just this morning i was checking e-mail when a message about one of my credit cards reminded me of my bills.  i realized it was already mid-april and couldn't recall if i'd taken care of them.  so i logged in to find that i'd nearly forgotten to pay them this month!  in the past, i had always been able to reassure myself that i'd simply remember when the time came, but today i finally resigned to setting a recurring appointment in my calendar.

i used to feel like i could recount almost anything.  when we played the 'memory' card game as kids, my stack would often be double the size of my opponents'.  i would often bet with my sister about random facts and tidbits of information from tv shows or movies or song lyrics or anything, really, and i won so much that she gradually stopped betting.

that was then, though.  these days, i'm constantly telling my girlfriends what good memories they have, because i find myself blanking on mine.  i don't know if it's selective omission or just that there are now more years in between.  it's probably alittle of both.

one thing i like to do when recalling a shared memory with family or friends is listening to other versions of the whole story, both similar and different, recollecting a piece here and there and patching it together.  it is almost like recapturing a fable and making it real, witnessing it come to life through our cumulative conversations.

memories are funny like that... no 2 are ever exactly the same.