Page 16 of Gone Tonight
Our brains form memories constantly, from the second we wake until we fall asleep. But if the moment we mentally capture doesn’t intersect with our attention, we lose the recollection forever. Emotional significance also helps move our memories into our longer-term stockpiles.
It’s why most of us can remember details about our Thanksgiving dinner from one year ago but can’t conjure a single recollection about a lunch we had one week ago.
I didn’t pay attention when my mother’s songs played in the past. Those memories are gone for good.
So I pay close attention now.
Her face looks softer than it did a few minutes ago, and her eyes are remote. She isn’t here with me now, absorbing this moment. I’m certain she’s trading the memory she could be creating now in order to relive one from the past.
Maybe this song played at one of her homecoming dances. Maybe she wore a pretty dress and wrist corsage and smiled up at the teenaged boy who opened the car door for her and drove her to the dance. Or maybe she stayed home and cried because no one asked her.
Why won’t she let me in?
In another year or so, I won’t be able to make any more memories with her. It breaks my heart to know she won’t share the ones she has sole ownership over.
I don’t realize tears are streaming down my cheeks until my mother’s face falls.
“Oh, honey, no.”
She hands her paper napkin to me across the table, but within seconds it’s soggy and useless. I can’t stop sobbing. My shoulders heave and my whole body is engulfed in sadness, like my mother’s was just overtaken by music.
She’s sitting right across from me, but I already miss her so much I can’t bear it. I start to hyperventilate.
She’s by my side in an instant, her arm around me, shushing me.
“What can I do?” she asks.
I draw in a shuddering breath. I didn’t plan for this to happen, but I grab the opening even though I don’t know if I’m seeking clues or simply grasping for a piece of my mother to hold on to.
“Tell me something about yourself. From when you were a teenager.”
My mother sighs and returns to her seat. I can see the struggle playing out on her face. She wants to assuage my hurt, but it isn’t easy for her.
I wait quietly, not wanting to interrupt whatever mental calculations she is going through.
“Did I ever tell you I was on the Poms squad in high school? We used to dance to this song.”
The revelation makes my tears evaporate. They’re replaced by a vision of my mother in a uniform, dancing on the football field at halftime. But I need more than that. I need to paint my own mental image of the scene in order to secure a near-replica of her memory insidemybrain.
“What did your uniform look like? Was your hair long?”
“My hair was almost down to my waist. But I pulled it up in double scrunchies for practices and games. I color-coordinated the scrunchies to my blue-and-gold uniform. It was a short skirt and vest.”
It helps. But not enough.
My mother is watching me as carefully now as I was studying her only moment ago. “Want to see my routine?”
I know exactly what she’s doing. When I was a kid, I used to begmy mother to dance like J.Lo and the Fly Girls. She was as good as any of them, but the fluid, sexy moves juxtaposed with her waitress uniform or pajamas always made me double over in laughter.
She gets up now, in gray sweatpants and one of my old college T-shirts, and launches into her choreographed dance, high kicking and singing along with the Backstreet Boys.
It’s wonderful and ridiculous and magical. I can see her on the football field, shaking her shiny blue-and-gold poms, moving to the music in front of a cheering crowd.
My tears have completely dried up. I’m with the young and the old versions of my mother now, seeing them fit together like shells of a Russian nesting doll.
“You’re a terrible singer!” I yell.
She grins and sings louder. Then I notice it.
