70. Forgetting

Probably nobody has ever remembered any event or person, or even object, completely. What I’ve never understood is why anybody tried.

What I understand even less is when people try to make a scene, recollection or piece of furniture seem older and more enshrouded in a gauze of mist than it already is. All those commercials that were shot in grainy black-and-white when film, video and any number of other could reproduce and store the colors paraded in front of them. Why cloud up a clear vision of a day? Why make houses and the things in them seem even more weathered than they actually are?

Mother never talked about the past—hers or anyone else’s. Not even mine. But it seemed that everyone, except her and Adam, who spent more than five minutes with me tried to get me to talk about what was gone, what they could never experience.

Or they tried to wipe out my recall: something they could no more do than to remember their own lives. We’ve all had doctors who told us the needles they stuck in our arms didn’t hurt, or teachers or other adults who told us we weren’t hurt after some bully—or the adult in question—punched, kicked or shoved us.

The result—at least for me—was always the same when any adult condescended or simply lied: contempt, on both sides. Likewise for anyone who tries to blur an already blurry picture. Even the ones who really believe they’re trying to ease my pain, in the end, earn my anger because they’re trying to blunt the edge of my recollections.

By the same token, I don’t try to recall everything, everybody, every moment. Even if I could, I couldn’t keep them, just as I can’t take every article of clothing I’ve ever worn with me. It’s one of the first lessons you learn when you can’t stay some place.

And the moment you begin to move, from necessity, the faces, the voices, the pieces of a house, all disappear into a blur. Or they lie submerged, bubbling through the cauldron of your dreams you don’t remember in the morning.