Thanks for the Memories
We all fall down
I have reached the age where I am asked at medical appointments about falling. Have you fallen recently? Are you afraid you might fall? The first time I was asked, I was flabbergasted. Why this sudden obsession with falling? And then, like a thunderclap, I realized I had reached that stage of life: the stage in which one might tumble down and never quite get back up. How did this happen? I got here without noticing, bouncing along merrily without ever quite counting the years.
I had my annual physical yesterday. While I am now pretty used to the falling questions, this time it was different, since I had indeed fallen—my stupid stumble on a stupid step in July which left me with a stupid broken ankle. So, quite chastened, I had to answer yes to the question of whether I’d fallen in the past year, and yes again to whether I was worried about falling, because my ankle is still tender, so I am a little worried about it wobbling like a top and pitching me earthward. Making matters worse, the other day I tripped on a dog toy (my house is littered with them) and twisted my just-healed ankle. I nearly gave myself a heart attack, thinking I’d broken it again. I’m not a tripper or a faller, generally speaking, so this recent run of face-plants is out of the ordinary and quite unwelcome.
This time, at the doctor’s office, I had yet another reckoning with mortality, or at least the decline that precedes it. The nurse handed me a sheet of paper with a large circle inscribed. Puzzling. Before we deal with the paper, she said, she would say three words that I should take pains to remember, because she would ask me for them later. My heart thudded. I know this test. I sat beside my mother as she tried, and failed, these mental acuity tests—they seem so simple, but they’re devilishly good at weeding out a sputtering brain. I asked the nurse why I was being put through these paces—had someone called the doctor to report that I’m losing it? No, the nurse said, my insurance required it. I let out my breath.
My words to remember were “daughter”, “mountain”, and “heaven”. Easy, I thought. I actually have a very good memory, and it’s barely eroded except for odd infrequent glitches, mostly related to trying to remember the name of a particular celebrity. The other day, for instance, I was trying to remember who Marcus Mumford is married to. This isn’t important information, and given the lifespan of celebrity marriages, it may be a fact that is true only so briefly that it’s hardly worth devoting brain cells to remembering, although in Mumford’s case, he’s actually been married to whatsherface for a longish time. I was pissed that I couldn’t remember her name. I remembered her face, and twenty movies she’s starred in, but for that moment, I couldn’t conjure her name. The irrelevance of the information made not remembering it that much more irritating. I felt like I was trying to start a balky car: I heard the key turn in my head but the engine wasn’t catching. This lasted all of about three minutes, and then the name Carey Mulligan came roaring in, the engine springing to life, and here I was remembering a piece of information I’m slightly embarrassed to know but exasperated to have briefly not remembered.
Anyway, I got slightly obsessed with remembering “daughter”, “mountain”, and “heaven”, and curious about how the nurse had chosen those three words, except that they’re all rather vivid, and they’re all two syllables, and they are quite distinct but easy to string together in a little memory-pack. Still, I started panicking that in my anxiety I would forget them.
In the meantime, the nurse asked me to draw the numbers of a clock face in the circle, and then add hands to indicate the time of 9:10. I wear a watch that has an actual clock face, as opposed to a digital face, and we have several clocks on the walls of our house, plus I’ve been able to tell time since—when? I can’t remember when you learn, but I’ve been an ace at it for a long time. But when you put numbers in a blank circle, they suddenly look very odd. Also, who thought of dividing the day into twelve chunks? Why twelve?? Why not ten? And the way each number means two things—the hour and the minute—is very peculiar, if you study it for more than a moment. This is the case with anything ordinary: Close examination makes it seem baffling, weird, wrong. Even saying a word repeatedly makes it seem like nonsense. When I was a kid, I used to say the word “chair” over and over until it sounded like gibberish. It was like tripping, for a split second.
The nurse complimented me on my clock face. As disconcerting as the concept of time being divided into twelfths suddenly seemed, I capably managed it. Then she waited patiently as I drew the hands. I got it right—of course I got it right—but I was so happy to dispense with the tests that I almost looked forward to her drawing blood.
SHOW NOTES
—I treated myself to a trip to H. Lorenzo the other day, which is one of the few fun places left to shop in Los Angeles, and has the additional virtues of being not far from my house and possessed of its own large parking lot. There, I browsed my usual favorites (Sacai, Comme des Garcons) and then came upon a rack of the strangest, most wonderful clothes by a designer called Hodakova, who I believe is from Sweden, and has a penchant for turning things inside out and upside down and deconstructing and reconstructing. Just my kind of thing! I ended up getting this skirt, and it gives me so much pleasure to just look at it that I don’t care if I don’t wear it a lot. But it’s actually a very wearable khaki skirt, so I think I actually will use it and not just admire it on the hanger.
For those of you who hate clicking on links (I feel your pain), here’s a picture:
—The wonderful Washington Post fashion writer, Rachel Tashjian, profiled Chitose Abe, the designer of Sacai. Dream assignment! Here’s the story and yes, she quoted me, but I’m linking to it because it’s a terrific piece and I genuinely love Sacai so this doesn’t count as log-rolling.
—I just started reading The Covenant of Water, which I’d resisted because it was so damn popular, and I usually assume, correctly, that my reading tastes don’t align with what’s very popular. But I love books set in India—for a while, I was quite obsessed with them, which is a obsession you can service well because there are so many great Indian novels. So I finally gave in and started it (as an audiobook—that’s how I’m reading most everything these days). I really like it and am curious to see how he brings together the two very different story lines. Anyway, so far, thumbs up.
—My birthday is on Thursday.
I had the clock-face test in March, at my annual Medicare checkup. I was seated in this giant chair -- kinda reminded me of Lily Tomlin's "Ernestine" character's chair -- which did all these whiz-bang things like weigh me by slightly rising off the floor. The arms of the chair were enormous, with not-quite-flat four-inch padded arms. When the nurse handed me the clipboard and asked me to draw a clock face showing [some time or other], I struggled to balance my arm -- I'm left-handed -- in such a way that I could draw the damned thing. Then I got nervous, remembering my own analog watch on my right wrist, and didn't want her to think I was cheating, so I sort of tucked that wing under while I tried to both balance the clipboard and draw the clock without the pen skittering across the page. By the time I settled down and drew something clockish, it ended up with both clock hands the same length so I went over and over and over them to emphasize which was the hour and which, the minute hand. It looked ghastly but at that point I was already embarrassing myself with how long I was taking. Of course when I read the doctor's assessment of the test results -- "unsatisfactory" -- I was REALLY annoyed. I've been obsessively drawing clock faces on Post-Its and such ever since.
The Covenant of Water is truly wonderful. I too put off reading it as I am often disappointed by popular reading recommendations. Not in this case. In fact I then picked up Cutting for Stone. .