An appointment? A trip to – where?
Did I forget? What day is this?
Don’t forget – forget what?
We live by our calendars – little square by little square.
Pen and paper by the phone always.
“I have sticky notes all over my house,”
a friend confides to me.
“Yet,” she adds, “either I cannot read
what I wrote
or cannot remember why I wrote it, so
who cares anyway?”
“I forgot” – remember those days?
The basic answer to so many questions
as one child or another stands before you
“Why didn’t you bring home your report card?
Why didn’t you give me the permission slip
last week that you need today?
Why didn’t you tell us that Parent’s Night is tonight –
and that you’d said I’d bake two dozen cupcakes?”
And on and on
Do you remember saying
“What if Dad forgot he had to go to work?
What if I forgot to pick you up after school?
Or conveniently forgot that dinner had to be cooked
tonight – and every night, for heaven’s sake.”
It seems now that the “I forgot” in youth
somehow morphs into
“I can’t remember anything”
as we age
and our children find it frustrating perhaps.
Might this be Divine Retribution?