Forgetting

Last week while my parents had my son with them at their lake house, I was charged with coming by every couple of days to water the potted plants on the front and pack porches.  On Friday, when I came by their house to pick up my kid, my dad was standing in the front yard with the hose, frantically hosing down the pots of petunias, trying to save the poor shrivelled things.  I'd completely forgotten.

This is not an isolated incident. Last week I had a terrible fight with The X, part of which was centered around the fact that I regularly forget to tell him about upcoming events, activities and important dates in Grayson's calendar. He sees it as deliberately cutting him out of our son's life.  It's not. I just forget.

The X could confirm this by just asking our son.  He'll tell you:  Mom Forgets.  Mom forgets to pack a lunch on field trip day. Mom forgets the time the school party is supposed to start and arrives just as it is ending. Mom forgets to refill his lunch account. Mom forgets the birthday party he was supposed to go to, or forgets to buy a gift.  Mom forgets that it's Scout night, even though every Monday is Scout night, and is surprised when Dad shows up to take him to the meeting. Mom forgets.

I wasn't always this way. I don't know if my forgetfulness is a sign of aging (god, I hope not), a lack of sleep, a failure of attention to detail, or some sort of psychological resistence to the myriad little necessary details of daily life. Sometimes, I simply fail to engage. I'm reading the teacher's note, but I'm not really absorbing all the details;  I'm hearing a coworker ask for information, but I'm not really making a mental note to fulfill the request. By the time I get to my office, the entire conversation is ancient history.

I am, I think... a little spaced out. Lately I just don't seem to be entirely there, wherever I am.  As I'm writing this now,  part of my brain is thinking about a couple of things I need to do today... things I will likely forget before this post is complete. My new absent-mindedness is part of why I have embarked on this Search for the Self. I feel reasonably sure that if I can get a handle on Who I Am... if I can come to terms with myself and be truly comfortable in my own skin, my brain won't be always pulled in two directions at once. Centeredness is the key, I think. I need to pull in all my mental tentacles (heh heh... mental tentacles... that would be a good band name) and focus on the still, calm center of Myself. 

The Buddhists talk about the need to Be Here Now. To practice Presence. It is something I aspire to.  Lately I feel like the cartoon character with the birds tweeting in a circle around her head:  thoughts, ideas, feelings, memories, worries... all circling noisily.  So I forget things, I lose things, I have to ask people to repeat what they've just said, I can't focus on tasks at hand, and I generally feel like my head has grown wings and is fluttering annoyingly just out of reach.

Somebody hand me a net.

Meanwhile, I sent my son off to camp yesterday, and I'm facing another week of being child-free.  This is week two of three in a row I have to do without my son in June.  I miss him, but I know he's happy at camp, where he is in the horseback riding club, and may be this moment saddled up on a horse, joyfully learning to ride.  If he's happy, I'm happy.  Lonely, a bit. But happy.

To keep the loneliness at bay yesterday after he left, I arranged to do a few hours service at Wildcare. I helped to muck out the Duck Inn, where are the little baby ducklings are housed. I fed young owls and hawks bits of chopped up rat at the end of a long set of forceps, and I chopped veggies and fruit for the little possums and raccoons. There are three new baby fawns there this week:  the sweetest, tiniest things, all spindly legs and big ears. They were orphaned, and without their mothers to feed and groom them, they were malnourished and weak, and covered in so many ticks that their eyes were infected and swelled shut.  Now they are tick free, they are bottle fed several times a day and their eyes are being cleaned and treated so that hopefully there will be no permanent damage.  Their poor mothers would be so relieved.