Forsythia

This piece was published in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review on August 5, 2007.

When I was younger, say, in my teens and twenties, I could remember everything. Who starred in what movie. The name, major and hometown of the guy I met at the fraternity party the month before. My locker combination, course schedule, test dates, football team record, and up-to-the-minute status of every high school romance. I never had to write anything down to remember it. My brain was like a personal digital assistant that magically recorded all relevant information and retrieved it as needed.

How times have changed. Now I need a flow chart just to remember my kids' names. Okay, that might be an exaggeration. Although I have been known to call the dog's name when I meant to call one of the kids. The dog isn't very good at emptying the dishwasher but I give her a treat anyway just for responding. A strategy I should try with the kids.

Anecdotal evidence has convinced me that childbirth is responsible for erasing the hard drive in my head that is supposed to store all this stuff. Maybe not erased. It's more like somebody installed a Trojan horse in there that reacts when I least expect it. I first noticed my capacity for accomplishing small tasks had somewhat diminished when I was pregnant with my second child. One day at work my clothes felt unusually uncomfortable. At first I chalked that up to my expanding girth. But when I visited the ladies room I realized I had somehow managed to put my underwear on sideways. Don't ask me to explain but apparently it is possible to do this unwittingly.

I never mentioned this embarrassing incident to anyone until one day my sister recounted her own experience with misfiring neurons. She had just given birth weeks earlier to her third baby. As she and her husband and three little ones drove through the country one day, she admired a bucolic scene from the car window. "Look kids!" she exclaimed, "Look at those, um...those...." What in the heck were those big animals called anyway? The ones with the big brown eyes and the spotted coats?

"You mean, cows?" her husband helpfully provided the correct term for those exotic creatures contentedly chewing their cud out in the fields of Fayette County. "Yeah, that's it! Cows!" she said, satisfied that she had indeed seen these animals someplace, sometime, in her life, and proud that she had impressed her little ones with her extensive first-hand knowledge of mother nature’s wonders.

My other sister exhibited a similar phenomenon not long after giving birth to a beautiful daughter. As she sat on the sofa conversing with a friend, she suddenly sat up with alarm. "Where's the baby??" she asked, the panic rising in her voice. To which her friend replied, "On your lap, nursing?" It's sort of like not being able to find your glasses, when someone reminds you they're on your head. Lost glasses generally don't cause your heart to skip a beat. Lost babies, well, that's a little more serious.

I started thinking about all this as I walked my son to school one day in the Spring. I do a lot of gardening and I pride myself on my knowledge of plant names, with their Latin roots and sophisticated multi-syllabic pronunciations. So I was a little disturbed when I pointed out a vibrant flowering bush to my son and could not for the life of me remember what it was called. I knew that I knew the name. My parents used to have those bushes lining their driveway. My grandmother too. I always looked forward to their gorgeous yellow blossoms because it meant winter was finally in full retreat and the assorted perennials around the yard would be emerging from their hiding places like the Munchkins in the Wizard of Oz. Winter, like the Wicked Witch of the West, was finally dead.

"So what's it called, Mom?"

"Hang on, I'll think of it," I said, and changed the subject to what were they doing in gym that day. After I dropped him off at school and turned back toward our street, I resolved to look it up on the internet the minute I got in the house. I concentrated, knitting my brow and running through all the names of plants I could think of, knowing that none of them was right. As I approached the end of the street I looked at the bushes again, glowing in a manner Moses would surely appreciate, and suddenly the word popped into my head: Forsythia! Yes! I congratulated myself, pumping my arms in the air like some basketball star that just scored a three-pointer at the buzzer. I broke out into a big grin and proceeded to walk around the yard, saying all the names of all the plants to myself, out loud: "Myrtle! Stella d‘Oro! Sedum!" I chanted. "Hosta! Artemisia! Sweet Woodruff!"

When I picked up my son from school that day and we approached the end of the street, again I gazed at the glorious blossoms. "We should get some Forsythia," I said to him.

"So you remembered?" he replied.

"Of course," I said, "why wouldn't I?"