Memory Malfunction for a Smiling Audience

When one reaches my age there is the natural expectation of memory malfunction--Where are my keys?  What is the name of that book?  Who is that gorgeous actor who played--you know that guy...he was a brother to Julia Roberts in...what is the name of that movie? WHY did I go into this room?   And it goes on--most often continuing on a downhill slide.

Today I was thinking about my mother.  Our family spent years listening to her tell stories about her past--stories that we felt certain never took place--or at least not the way she described it since she'd told another account a few weeks previously with but a few of the same facts.  

Mother loved an audience and because her main reading sources centered around People magazine, her stories weren't deeply cerebral.  And, to be honest, I sometimes wished for more.

Recently I read Dreams in the Time of War by Ngugi wa Thiong'o--his childhood memoir.  He talks excitedly about the storytellers among his extended Kenyan family.  I thought of Mother and her stories and wondered if perhaps I put too many of my expectations around her memories.  I wanted one thing--she gave something else.

We are all storytellers of a sort.  Our stories are our perception--our truth of whatever we speak, i.e. the accident at the intersection as viewed by observers on each of the four corners.  Perhaps Mother's stories weren't so much about memory malfunction, but about seeing the smiles from her listeners.

Mother has now been gone nearly 1 1/2 years, and yesterday as I drove in the neighborhood where she last lived, I thought of her final months.  I wish she could have told stories then.  But I only recall her weakness, leaning heavily on one side, unable to recall the simplest detail of her day.

Perhaps that's why I want to write down my stories.  So at best I can read them when that time of memory malfunction gives my recollections tones that overshadow the original.  I grin as I remember that I also love seeing the smiles of my listeners....perhaps there is some of Mother's storytelling in me after all.