So we all know the joke that starts with “A man walks into a bar…”
Well, have you heard the one that starts with “A woman walks into a room…”? Because if I’m the woman, then half the time I have no idea why I walked into the room in the first place. I’m a smart girl, drink plenty of water, eat right, get rest, occasionally get laid, keep my stress low, but dammit my memory is for CRAP!.
Pick a room in my house and I’ve actually whispered aloud “why did I come in here” at least a dozen times in each of them.
20 years ago I blamed it on Mommy-Brain, but I think now there’s another “M” at play.
Mumps? Measles? Mad Cow disease?
Nope, according to the calendar I have arrived at Menopause station. All aboard…next stops are vaginal dryness, night sweats and wait for it…memory problems. So for any of you who guessed “moist” as my “M” you really couldn’t have been more wrong.
Let’s put all the other symptoms to the side for now and focus on the hunk of Swiss Cheese I now refer to as my memory. I actually stop in the middle of doing stuff because I can’t remember why I started doing it in the first place. Sometimes I will be mid-sentence and then all of a sudden it’s gone. And as far as people’s names go, I would definitely have an easier time if everyone in my life wore nametags or just responded warmly to “Hey…you”
You know how your phone fills up with pictures, videos, test messages until things stop working correctly until you start deleting and making some space? I’m convinced my brain also has a tiny little memory card that can hold only a certain number of things and then it drops one to add one.
- If I remember your name, I’ll forget my address.
- If I remember to do the laundry, I’ll forget to pick the kids up at school.
- If I remember to stop at the store for bread, I risk forgetting to take my pants off before I start peeing.
You get the idea…it’s awful. Why do women have to get it? I know men have something similar but for crying out loud it says MEN right in the name!!!
Since I can’t remember what I ate for lunch, it’s not a stretch to figure that I’m not going to remember all the day-to-day experiences I had with my family this past year. Even in the year of Covid, we still managed to laugh, to cry and even had an adventure or two. I never want to forget family movie nights watching “old” movies like Sixteen Candles, Protocol, Jaws, Rocky Horror Picture Show, or my favorite Alien (a little slow but still holds up and Sigourney Weaver is a total bad ass at any age, although my girls knew her as the Ghostbusters lady – another family movie night classic). We visited Old Westbury Gardens for their Shimmering Solstice light show. I bought a Tesla, we went to a wedding and I grew closer to a cousin I barely knew. This was also the year I experienced my older daughter’s first driving lesson (part of me wouldn’t mind forgetting that). I watched my husband receive 2 Emmy’s for his incredible work in television. And who wouldn’t want to forget having to explain what finger-banging was to my 14 year old who honestly watches more South Park than she should.
I want to remember all of it, the good and the bad. Menopause may have given me sore boobs and taken away my ability to have a good night sleep but my memories are off limits. My hubby is constantly telling me we need to back up our phones so we don’t lose anything, so I decided to take that a step further. So before my Hard Drive became a Floppy Disk I came up with a plan.
Enter the memory jar. When I first read about this idea, my post menopausal brain did a happy dance. This is the perfect way to fill in all the blank spaces and a fun thing to do with my family that costs no money. The value is in the experience, not the purchases my dear readers.
We keep a jar on the kitchen table (it’s a thick glass square jar that I think held flowers at my wedding 20 years ago. But with my memory, I may have shoplifted it from Home Goods last week…who knows?) and every time someone feels inclined to share a moment (good or bad) they write it down on a piece of paper and add it to the jar. It’s like a time capsule but without all the burial dirt, thanks to our dogs Han and Leia there is never a shortage of dirt in the house already.
Then on New Year’s Eve we dump out the papers and read them out loud. It’s fun because even the rest of my family who aren’t in menopause forget about this stuff too. So whether you are reading this in January, July or November it’s never too late to start backing up your memories and preparing a fun surprise for the whole family on New Year’s Eve. When you’re done reminiscing keep the strips of paper in a box, scrapbook, display it all in a shadow box, shred it, or compost the paper. It’s a fun way to remember all the moments, big and small, that you share as a family and then the next New Year’s Day you start again.
If your family is like mine they embraced the idea right from the start.
- “Do we have to. I hate to write.”
- “Why do I have to do this? I remember everything just fine.”
- “I don’t have menopause. This is stupid.”
But it never fails, after we read through the whole jar they are singing a different tune.
- “This was so much fun, I’m glad we did this.”
- “Thanks mom, that was a great idea.”
- “I don’t have menopause. This is stupid, but I guess it was fun.”
I hold back my “I told you so” and my “I knew you would have fun” and just silently gloat like a good mom. Getting older isn’t awesome, I’m still HOT but it just comes in flashes now and I may find myself in the garage holding a spatula and a bottle of nail polish trying to figure out what the original plan was. Our memories and experiences are how we document this journey and in many ways it’s the best part. Looking back at those experiences with my family and reliving them as we prepare for a brand new year is my favorite “M”…Magnificent.
