Last week I forgot the word "geranium." I plant these flowers every summer in the planter box by the front stoop. The seem happy there, and bloom very nicely all summer long. Last year I put a couple of geraniums in an open-work bronze pot lined in moss. They bloomed so well, I took them inside before the first frost and put them on the counter top in the kitchen. They stopped blooming inside, but I fed and watered them and they stayed healthy looking. This spring I went to move them outside again and I could not remember what they were called.
I've always had trouble remembering names, and I have no musical memory at all. I still forget the names of people I've worked with for years, and I can hear a song 10 times, and still say to my kids, "That's a nice song. What's it called?" But I don't usually just forget a common noun like geranium.
I asked my husband what they were called, but he didn't know. We saw them in hanging pots at the grocery store and both snuck over to look at the label to see what they were: "Hanging Pot". That's a big help. The Safeway doesn't have to label them because everybody knows what they are, except my husband and me.
After about 4 days it suddenly came to me. I was thinking about something else and the word geranium popped into my head. Where had it been? Memory is a strange thing.
I think Billy Collins sums it up nicely.
Forgetfulness
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read, never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses good-bye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of you spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
Billy Collins
It's possible I have used the Billy Collins poem before. I can't remember.
I don't think I've shared this one:
Gardener
Under the window, on a dusty ledge,
He peers among the spider webs for seed.
He wonders, groping, if the spiders spun
Beneath that window after all. Perhaps
His eyes are spiders, and new veils are dropped
Each winter and summer morning in the brain.
He sees but silken-dimly, though the ends
Of his white fingers feel more things than are.
More delicate webs, and sundry bags of seed.
That flicker at the window is a wren.
She taps the pane with a neat tail, and scolds.
He knows her there, and hears her – far away,
As if an insect sang in a tree. Whereat
The shelf he fumbles on is distant, too,
And his bent arm is longer than an arm.
Something between his fingers brings him back:
An envelope that rustles, and he reads:
“The coreopsis.” He does not delay.
Down from the rafter where they always hang
He shoulders rake and hoe and shuffles out.
The sun is warm and thick upon the path,
But he goes lightly, under a broad straw
None knows the age of. They are watching him
From upper windows as his slippered feet
Avoid the aster and nasturtium beds
Where he is not allowed to meddle. His preserve
Is further, and no stranger touches it.
Yesterday he was planting larkspur there.
He works the ground and hoes the larkspur out,
Pressing the coreopsis gently in.
With as old hose he plays a quavering stream,
Then shuffles back with the tools and goes to supper.
Over his bowl of mil, wherein he breaks
Five brittle crackers, drifts the question: “Uncle,
What have you planted for the summer coming?”
“Why – hollyhocks,” he murmurs, and they smile.
Martin Van Dorn
