The Absent-Minded Mother

     The worst “mommy fail” moments become kind of funny when shared over lunch with your friends. Perhaps these have happened to you. If not, you can expect them sooner or later.

     You are in the carpool line at school. A couple kids pile in your back seat. You’ve got instruments going in the trunk area, kids piling in the middle, your baby making noise in his car seat. You pull out into the lane and away from the school, glance in the rear-view mirror and see…your son running after your car, waving his hands. Next stop: the high school. You pick the teens up in a local neighborhood. They start to pile into the car. Your favorite song pulls up on your playlist. You sing along while you start to pull away, only to slam on the brakes when you hear shouts from the back seat. You look around to see the last passenger running along with the door wide open, trying to get in the moving car.

     The phone is ringing in your ear. You are calling someone, but who? Why? You hope when they answer you will recognize their voice and remember.

     You go to pick up the pizza, get all the way there and notice you forgot your wallet. You go to the grocery store and come home with a whole bunch of food you did not know you needed and nothing from your mental list of things for dinner tonight. Let's not even talk about the Target phenomenon.

     There was something planned for this morning. Monday morning. You know it. Something…

     You need to call your child’s teacher. What was her name? It’s on the tip of your tongue…

     They are passing out yearbooks. Everyone in the class gets one, except your child.  So the next year they are passing out yearbooks and every child gets one except your child who gets two—making sure you don’t forget can get expensive. Then, this year, my child actually came home with FOUR yearbooks. You can believe my phone was beeping with texts about that one.

     "Don't dry my jersey Mom, the letters will stick together."

     I nod. "Got it."

      "No, seriously Mom, coach said I'll get in big trouble. DO NOT DRY THE JERSEY."

     "I'm not gonna dry your jersey. I got it, OK?"

     One hour later: You totally dry the jersey.

     
     You put milk in the pantry and flour in the fridge. 
     You brush your teeth with Desitin and put sunblock in your armpits.

     For me, it all started when I had my first baby. I thought I was just sleep deprived. I remember the first time I tried to have a conversation with someone and I couldn’t remember something.  I was so frustrated because the word was on the tip of my tongue. This kindly Mom in her forties just chuckled and told me my brain would come back. It was just the pregnancy talking. I smiled and was happy to be a part of the mothers in the world who make sacrifices to bring children into our families.     

     It has been many years now and six kids later; I would like to find that helpful woman and ask, “When?  When is my mental ability going to return?”  I am still waiting, and it’s not better! It’s worse! Now, instead of telling me it is the pregnancy talking, my kindly older friends tell me it is because I am so busy.  I have too much information playing all at the same time and some of it gets kicked out. How’s that for a scientific reason I forget things?

     What would we do without friends? I especially love the friends who forget things like I do.  When I do something crazy, I always call one of my absent minded friends so we can laugh about it.  

      “Hey, I went to the Dr. today and they told me the appointment isn’t until next week!”   

     “I went to the Dr. today too, but my appointment was yesterday!” 

     “My Dr. sends me same day text reminders and I still forget!” 

     We laugh all the time at all the things we forget.  We laugh because if we don’t laugh, we would cry.   

     My daughter’s best friend opened up her lunchbox and it was completely empty.  I have sent my daughter without lunch or money so many times that the two of them just plan on sharing with each other. Some of you might read that and wonder, “How do you send your child to school with an empty lunchbox?” But the rest of us read that and laugh. We laugh in relief that we aren’t the only ones.  Forgetfulness loves company just like misery, but forgetfulness does not have to be miserable, especially if we can laugh about it.

      I know there are more like me out there.  We are super intelligent people.  Clear, easy recall used to be normal and expected.  Lists were often made in our heads and remembered.  We were quick in conversation, had fun comebacks, remembered people’s names and important information about them so we could show we cared.  Our mind was a reliable friend. 

     But now, now is a different kettle altogether.  We walk into a room to get something and completely forget what we are after.  We stop talking mid-sentence because we can’t remember where we were going with that thought.  We try to listen while someone else is talking but if we don’t repeat in our mind over and over again what we want to say, it will be gone forever.  We have a whole mental list of all the things we wanted to do the minute the kids get on the bus and we can’t remember one thing on it as soon as we shut the front door to an empty house.  

 

     We forget orthodontics appointments, dentists, doctor, pet grooming, birthday parties. I forget all birthday parties. I think it is because deep down, they are the bane of my existence.  Birthday parties require a lot of specific memory power.  You have to remember to buy a gift ahead of time, and then you have to remember to actually attend on the correct day and time of the party.  There isn’t just one party to remember either.  Every child has multiple parties all year long!

     School:  Another bane.  I forget all kinds of things for the kids’ school.  Pioneer day, Greek toga day, book character day are all routinely forgotten until the night before.  Supplies are tough to remember as well:  Poster board. Finding poster-board at 10 PM is rough. 

   

     People’s names! I have forgotten names of people I see every day, people I have known for more than a decade-- Name gone. Whoosh. Just like that.  I’ll remember it again in a day or two right when I don’t need it. 

    I did go to the doctor about it one time.  I even had an MRI. I did memory testing, blood tests and hormone testing—all inconclusive.  Nothing is technically wrong with me; except there is definitely something wrong with me.  I do not have the same mental functionality I had years ago and there are many women experiencing the same symptoms as I am.

     I think this condition should have a name. I am convinced it is a real thing and it happens more often than not.  Wikipedia says “A syndrome, in medicine and psychology is the collection of signs and symptoms that are observed in, and characteristic of, a single condition.”  Sounds like I have a syndrome: Let’s call it, the Absent Minded Mother Syndrome.

     Although medical professionals could not offer me a specific diagnosis, research has shown that there are at least 7 types of memory problems that are not signs of deeper health issues that many people experience.   According to a Harvard Medical School Report, “Forgetfulness—7 types of normal memory problems,” following are several of these normal memory problems that most women experience:

1.       1.  Absentmindedness:  Forgetting where we placed our keys, skipping appointments, missing a child’s soccer game.  All of these situations can be attributed to our absentmindedness and medical journals call this normal.

2.      2.  Blocking:  The word is on the tip of your tongue. You almost have it.  According to research, your brain does this when it retrieves a similar memory to the one you are seeking and therefore not the accurate word.  Usually your brain is able to produce the correct word in a minute or two.

3.      3.  Misattribution: Your memories overlap. You get part of the story right and then try to place new details from another memory in the wrong scenario.  

     Knowing that this type of memory loss is considered normal and that it is experienced by most of the population does not alleviate the problem.  It does, however, lesson the anxiety and worry that something is wrong with our brain. 

 

     But there is hope, help that I will publish at a later time. After I diagnosed myself with the absentminded mother syndrome I began significant research on how to alleviate the problem in my own life.  There are clever tips, technology, digital assistants, diet changes, meditation, exercises, different methods at home and new habits that can help us all function above our peak, even better than the days when we functioned at full mental capacity.