I have been forgetting things. I am not so far gone that I can't remember having known them, but they keep evaporating from my brain like a puddle on the pavement in August.

Sometimes it's facts of little importance, like where I have put my shoes, or my high school roommate's maiden name. Other times, though, things I've forgotten seem more consequential, and worth the effort to rummage for. Like why I got married, or why I thought having children was such a great idea. When wifehood feels empty, or one of my offspring suffers, or I find myself bone weary with their incessant needs, I lose my footing and stumble. I could keep plodding... or I could just sit here on this rock and rest, reaching deep inside for the conviction I once felt that used to boom with surety that denied all denying.

 

But I have forgotten.

 

Once, my son Zachary asked what his name meant. I paused. I knew that twenty years ago choosing names felt like a weighty responsibility, and we selected them with exquisite attention to meaning. But just why we picked it then escaped me now.

 

"I forget. Let's ask Dad."
 

 We queried him at dinner and he laughed aloud.

 

"Zachary means God remembers."

 

Well, I am glad somebody does.

 

I watched a flock of swallows today. Their swooping dance was a jarring contrast to the gridlock of traffic I was entrenched in. Their movement was fluid and free, immune to hurrying and did not proceed in a straight line. Their collective flight was more an expression of the joy of going than the need to arrive. It made me jealous, as I sat enslaved to the task of getting there on time. The flock was void of the corrosive competition endemic to my daily commute.

 

"You getting where you want to go gets in the way of me getting where I want to go." Not so with the swallows.

 

Yet I wondered. Was remembering part of their journey? I doubted it. There could be no reliance on recall. Remembering implies having been this way before, and for the birds each ramble with the wind was a fresh one. Not only that, but remembering is too slow. A bird's innate ability to move synchronistically with others is three times faster than the same bird's reaction time to danger, a process more dependent on thought.

In college I learned several Bach pieces on the guitar. Through months of pouring over tedious tablature, the notes were branded on my fingers, so that now I can unleash them easily. But it is not because I remember how. Indeed if I try too hard to think I interrupt the process of heart singing through hands.

Some of our most poignant experiences in life have nothing to do with remembering. We bypass our intellect and respond. Falling in love, our wedding night, childbirth and a minutes old baby latching to her mother's breast each call on a knowing more permanent than mortal memory.

When the wise men decided to travel toward a King, remembrance was not their map. No previous experience could have prepared them for following a star. The text does not make it clear whether they started together, or synchronistically, like swallows, beginning their parallel migration, stopping in Jerusalem before taking flight again to the door of the Child. When the shepherds heard angels in the night sky, it was not advanced planning that lifted their feet in haste. Perhaps they had no idea where they were going until they got there. They didn't seem to mind.

 

Sometimes my star is dim. If I blink, or my eyes are blurred by tears, I second guess whether I saw anything at all. Sometimes the distant song of angels fades, and I am left wondering if I heard anything more substantial than my own longing.

Maybe it is not a sign that I am broken, this forgetting. Perhaps I am not lost even if I do not know where I am or where I am going. Maybe it is enough that Somebody does.