Memories... holding onto them

First off - Yesterday's winner of a copy of Diane Kelly's FOUR ALARM HOMICIDE is Julie Bush! Congratulations, Julie! Contact Diane via her website contact link: https://www.dianekelly.com/contact/ 

HALLIE EPHRON: Dual factor identification is a scourge. You type in your user name and password and instead of opening sesame, back comes a message that you’re about to receive a text with a security code.

Now this security code is often 6 characters long, sometimes more, and it appears on your screen (heaven help you if it’s a cell phone screen because you have to know how to switch around among your apps) for about 4 seconds. Barely long enough to scratch an itch. Definitely not long enough for me to memorize a 6-8 digit code.

But, I’ve discovered that if I say the number (out loud) when it flashes, it seeds itself in my brain long enough that I can type it into the waiting prompt.

I was pleased to see similar advice in a New York Times review (“A Neurologist’s Tips to Protect Your Memory” ) of a book (“The Complete Guide to Memory: The Science of Strengthening Your Mind,”) by neurologist Dr. Richard Restak.

Memory decline, according to Dr. Restake, is not inevitable.

The review praises the book’s abundance of tips to protect your memory. These include VISUALIZE. For instance, when you meet someone new and want to remember their name, visualize it.

I once met a doctor named Gabriel something. I can’t remember his last name but his first name pops right into my head because when I was introduced to him, I visualized him as an angel wearing a doctor’s head mirror.

I've used a similar strategy to remember a shopping list. Suppose I need to buy hamburger, toilet paper, milk, a cucumber, and raspberry soda. I imagine them in band of colors: two reds, two whites, and a green. Easier to hold that picture in my brain rather than the list itself.

Another piece of advice: Turn off your GPS. I can testify to the way relying on it to get me everywhere has clouded the maps in brain.

My favorite of his advice (I'm not making this up): read novels!

Dr. Restak claims that when people begin to have memory difficulties, they switch to reading nonfiction. Reading a novel keeps your brain agile -- you have to keep track of the characters, plot lines, and most especially with MYSTERY novels, there are the clues red herrings that often start dropping in Chapter 1 and don’t get resolved until the end.

So I hope I've given you more incentive to buy more mystery novels. What are your strategies for keeping your memory sharp and remembering those 8-digit codes?

The Nose Knows

INGRID THOFT

The other night I was cooking chicken stir-fry with a sweet and sour sauce when I was hit with a wave of nostalgia.  I flash backed to the months I lived in London a couple of years after graduating from college and the small kitchen in the basement-level flat.  What brought me back?  The scent of the sweet and sour sauce smelled like a Tesco meal I often heated up in that little flat.  Twenty-three years later and almost 5,000 miles away, I was right back there, prepping my meal before plopping down in front of the telly.

It's believed that scent triggers memory more than any of the other senses, but it's still amazing, and even a little jarring, when it does.  My dinner prep prompted me to react on other scents that have hit  my olfactory bulb and lit up my amygdala and hippocampus. 

Palmolive dish washing liquid reminds me of my paternal grandmother's kitchen in Montana.  I can never quite believe this because I was only in that kitchen a handful of times in my childhood.  The formula has changed over the years, and the memory is not as strong, but the memory of that initial scent recognition remains with me to this day.

Oil of Olay:  Yes, I know it's Olay now, but when I first smelled it on my mom, Oil was part of the name.  A couple of months ago, I was staying with my aunt, and she happened to walk by the open bathroom while I was applying Olay.  She stopped and came back to the doorway to ask if I was using Oil of Olay.  In turns out that her mother used the lotion, too, (is there anyone who hasn't) and catching the scent on the air brought her mother back to her.

When my husband and I go for walks along Puget Sound, the briny smell of the sea instantly transports me to my hometown, Marblehead, MA on the opposite side of the country.  The tang of salty air is so intertwined with my childhood, I can't imagine one without the other.

What about you?  What scents live in your memory?

On throwing out your life

"For the most part, we, who could choose simplicity, choose complication." Anne Morrow Lindbergh from "Gift from The Sea."

JAN: No Feng Shui for me. And after spending two days and filling two trash barrels cleaning out my office, I'm officially rejecting all the de-cluttering advice out there. Sure, I feel better with the clear surface of my desk, and this rare moment in time when I actually know where everything is. But what struck me most about the project was what I couldn't throw out.

Like the aging, yellow clips of my earliest newspaper articles at The News-Tribune in Waltham. The features about a local farmstand, a minor riot in the Latino neighborhood, a bilingual program at the high school. I was 21-years old. No brilliant writing, and surely no clips I would send off as part of a packet to impress a magazine editor. Since they were followed up by more sophisticated articles in more prestigious publications, what is the possible use for them? To prove I was young once? Uninformed?

And those half-baked short stories I'll never return to?? Why can't they go in the bin? And do I really need five copies of two different versions of my very first novel that will never be sold??I have a habit of never quite cutting ties to the past. Is that what this is about? Or do I secretly think that every single poorly written sentence I've ever written is precious? Tell me guys, is this some form of egomania, a hoarding disorder, or are there useless writings or things in your files and closets that you, too, just can't throw out?

HALLIE: It is odd, what we can and can't throw out. Especially true after someone dies--I couldn't throw away my mother's eyeglasses. Bizarre.

My advice is don't throw away those early clippings. Some day you may be moved to create a memory album (would that be pathetic or what?) Looking back shows you how far you've come, something that one looses sight of in the thicket of life. Besides, the minute you throw one of those suckers away you know you'll be looking for it. I mean how much space is it taking up, really?

Who says cutting ties with the past is a good thing?

RO: I don't think it's egomania - unless you're also picking out the spot for the Jan Brogan Library. I don't have many of my old writings and newsclippings since I don't have any. OTOH, the ticket stub from the time the Knicks made it to the Finals? Got it. Any newspaper article that could turn into a storyline or character? In a bulging folder. My wedding dress? Now what the hell I am keeping that for? In a huge box under the bed, keeping the dust bunnies company.

Like Hallie, with her mom's glasses...I have my sister's handbag - phone, tic-tacs, metrocard, loosechange.

All of this stuff's important, and with the possible exception of the wedding dress, why shouldn't I keep them?

JAN: The Jan Brogan Library, You know Ro, I hadn't thought about it before, but.....

HANK: And will you carry all of our books at the JB Library? I like it. Anyway. Come visit and we'll talk about saving things. I have a file for every year called, um, "save." It has clippings, cards, photos. Photos, photos. Funny stuff. Invitations. Cartoons. Ticket stubs. Okay, and you're saying, that sounds organized. And it is. Except for all the other stuff I'm keeping thats not in the files.

The RSVP cards for my wedding. (Both weddings.) Letters from people. (On actual paper.) The scripts from the first radio stories I wrote in 1970. Every column I wrote or edited for Rolling Stone. Emmy programs from the past 25 years. Announcements of my book signings, interviews, fliers. (Maybe 2 or three of each.) My terrible effort at a first novel 15 years ago. (About a golf pro. And I don't play golf.) Test columns I wrote when I was maybe going to be an editorial writer in Atlanta. News releases I wrote for a political campaign, ("With just time for a quick corn dog, Matt headed to the...." I'm NOT kidding.) And let's not even talk about t-shirts with slogans and dates on them. Let's blog about that sometime soon.

But here's the thing. I hardly ever look at any of it. It's just--there. And it's comforting to know it's there. (A pal of mine, an author, came home to see her house burned to the ground a few years ago. Can you imagine? It makes my stomach hurt, even now, to think of it. All that remained--a box of her high-school writings and photos. The truly irreplaceable things.)

Is it a reminder, maybe, that I actually did something at some point? Which is bizarre, because it's not like I'm doing nothing now. Is it like our Ozymandias? Some desperate effort to prove we exist and are worthwhile even though someday, someone will just toss it all?
I'm still keeping it.

JAN: Yes, physical confirmation that we are living a life. And maybe just the tiniest touch of whatever human need is at the crux of that hoarding disorder.... Besides, you never know when you're going to go back to that very first novel.