In threes

We liked things in three long before Dorothy exclaimed, “Lions, tigers, and bears, oh my!” in The Wizard of Oz. It’s been a popular grouping display in the oldest of art, and a well-utilized interior decorating device since people started displaying collectibles on mantles, but for me, the Oz connection trumps all. When I put things together in groups of three, I hear Judy Garland’s voice chanting in my brain each and every time.

Maybe not that once in Oregon.

I may not visualize things the way most people do – the whys and hows of visualizing was a popular online area of discussion some months back; it turns out a small percentage of us don’t see pictures when we close our eyes.

When you ask me to visualize something, I have an understanding of that thing in all its aspects, but I don’t “see” it the way I see things with my eyes.

There truly is no spoon for me.

There’s even a name for it – aphantasia. That’s a just a descriptor, by the way. Not being able to visualize in the same way as the majority isn’t a medical condition or disability. It’s a quirk. Most of the time, people don’t even realize they’re doing things differently. 

I didn’t realize I was “visualizing” in a way that’s different from most people. I didn’t realize that most people “see” the images they generate in their minds when visualizing. Some with aphantasia say they thought using the word “see” in that context was a metaphor. I also thought it was a metaphor. I thought the act of trying was the meditation.

It can run in families – my father visualizes like me – but it doesn’t mean we’re limited in our understandings. We just do it differently. When asked to visualize, what happens for me is move to a state of understanding and appreciating the thing that includes a reference to what it would look like if I saw it, or an example, but there’s no picture inside the brain. It’s an appreciation of essence, more than a visual recollection.

The same is true when I say things like, “I hear Judy Garland’s voice chanting words in my brain.”  I don’t “hear” them like I hear the radio, I just understand what it would sound like if I was listening to it. I do it with songs regularly, run lyrics in my memory in a way that’s akin to hearing, but not quite the same.

None of us remember sounds that well, as it happens. We don’t recall the things we hear with the same ease as we access the memories acquired via sight or touch.

Sense memory

There is, of course, the exceptions that prove the rule. I watched an interesting CBC television show some years back about Canadian/Allied spy efforts during WW2. It was fascinating – it was called X Company and is available to stream on CBC if you’re interested – and there aren’t too many episodes, something else I appreciate with television shows. I learned things I’d not known about Canadian history before, including our spy efforts, but the show also introduced me to condition of synesthesia. One of the main characters has it, and it, along with his eidetic memory, come in useful as plot devices.

Synesthesia is what happens when the brain routes sensory information through more than one system, through what we would call ‘unrelated systems.’ You hear a name, and see the colour blue, or read a word, and suddenly taste pineapple (with ‘pineapple’ not being the word you read). It can lead to challenges in childhood – kids often report difficulties with it when they’re learning to read – however, people with synesthesia are also known to refer to it as a ‘sixth sense.’

My mother’s voice

We don’t remember sounds well, and they say the voices of those lost to us are the first memories of them to go. From personal experience, I concur. I forgot the sound of my mother’s voice quickly to guilt and distress. At least I was aware it was coming – I already knew that factoid about memory and voice. My father didn’t, and had been quite distressed about it before I sent him some videos by text for him to on his phone and thus close at hand.

I’m grateful for the videos that allow me to bring mom’s voice back. I wish I had more of them. I wish I had every moment captured. Not really, but grief makes you feel like that sometimes. I feel guilty about acquiring new experiences that she’ll never know about. I hate the finality of death. Though I still talk to my mother. We agree more now.

I’ve heard people say, “Take more photos than video” – and who the ‘they’ are that crops up in our lives so regularly I have no idea about – but I would say take plenty of both. It’s not like digital information takes up much in the way of space, and if you want your computer’s memory freed and sped up, well, pretty much everyone and their dog is selling cheap cloud storage these days.

I don’t have enough videos. Not of anyone. I had to hunt a bit to find ones of mom talking. There are more on dad’s phone, but we don’t cloud together much. On the bright side, I’m now starting a picture file organization project with my computer to locate and collect the videos under a single umbrella – and why non-Apple computers doesn’t automatically sort that way is baffling – and since organizing things is one of my happy places, I’m looking forward. I found one from Mother’s Day 2023 right off. Microsoft doesn’t sort, but it does remember the date.

This year was the first Mother’s Day since my mother died. All the firsts after a death suck, and having no mom on Mother’s Day was no exception. There’s a weird disconnect to the day since I’m a mother myself on the end. But it’s a strange thing have your mother not be here, it’s a strange thing to have her be dead, and therefore lost to things like face-to-face conversations and hugs. Though I do talk at her every now and then. We spoke a lot when she was alive, and I still have things to say. I want her to know about the changes in my life, and in life in general, and about the things I’m doing now, and about the amazing wallet I found at the thrift store.

Brand new, from Nine West, a trifold design, red ‘snakeskin,’ and only three dollars.

Angel food birthday cakes

My son and his partner are making stroganoff for me for my birthday this year – it’s in the first week of June, and I will be fifty-five. Seems like a good age. It’s numerological a one, and that’s new beginnings and adventures, and greater understanding. I’ll take it.

Beef stroganoff was the meal I made when my son brought her home for me to meet that first time, and I was nervous, so I drank wine. But I have no alcohol tolerance, so I got drunk and we had drunken stroganoff. It’s the same as regular, but you have to really overcook the noodles. Otherwise, it was great. And why wouldn’t it be? It’s my favourite meal, and aside from the starch side, I can make it in my sleep.

I’ve had stroganoff for dinner at almost every birthday. It’s tradition. I used to make it a couple of times a month as well. But I haven’t had it since my mother died. I haven’t wanted it. Making me stroganoff for my birthday was my mother’s love language. Stroganoff, and angel food cake for dessert. As I got older, the angel food cake was decorated with whipped cream and berries. I’m a fan of fruit. When I was a child, she’d often decorate it with a doll in the centre. You can make beautiful flowers on icing by slicing up coloured marshmallows.

My mother loved celebrating our birthdays. She was really good at it.

I find that my enthusiasm for birthday this year is low, for all that I loved celebrating it up until now. It’s like my enthusiasm for stroganoff, and my enthusiasm for weightlifting, something else we used to do together. She came to it quite late – at sixty-five. She decided to get proactive about aging and aging strong.

And I have exercise equipment, so it was a good match. She’d come over three times a week, and we’d work out with me as trainer, and chat. We did it for years, through good moments and bad. But she stopped being able to move the weights about six months before she died, and I’ve lost my love for them as well. It will likely come back, but I’m just not ready to dive into the things we did together as solo acts. I have other exercise I enjoy.

Everything changes with death. It is the future, the undiscovered country. Death is the door, and you don’t get a choice about walking through. And the new world is different. We’re different. And in the new world, right now, stroganoff tastes a little bit like grief.

But my son doing this for me is also love. How annoying that you can’t have one without the other.

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