Memory Holes

I’m pretty sure my memory is as airtight as a colander, perhaps the faded plastic wedding gift from nearly 12 years ago. Last week, We finally threw it away, it had been cracked across the handle for months.

Things leak out, while other bits stay lodged. Sometimes it’s the important pieces, and other times it’s just snippets of time that seem unimportant, mundane.

Last month, I picked my 3 year old son up from my mothers house and he had made me a drawing for my 34th birthday, a scribble of white crayon and paper taped onto a black piece of card stock.

You remember, don’t you? My mom says, the year there was a snow storm on your birthday party? I shrug, not really. I assume there was more than one, growing up just outside of Toronto with a Mid-December birthday.

We were going to play hockey, she prods. But there was a blizzard so we stayed home instead. Your friend Brittany was especially disappointed, you know she played hockey. I remember Brittany, who never liked me much, but not the hockey-party. I rack my brain, scour it’s edges for traces of lingering regret over the abandoned party plans, but mostly I can’t imagine myself choosing a hockey party in the first place. A reading party, maybe. I remember always wishing I could have a pool party. If only I had been born during the fleeting summer months warm enough for pool parties in Ontario.

My mom seems disappointed, and I try harder to remember. But I can’t drag anything up. So I shrug, and bundle my son into his puffy jacket, plenty warm for the early December drizzle in Atlanta. I wrestle him into his car seat, and we wave to oma, who stands at the window, all the way down the driveway.

I wonder what else I’ve forgotten.