I have a friend who puts notes by her door when I visit so I do not forget something she has for me to take home. Or so she does not forget to give it to me. The sticky note may say something like "roast and plant" so when I go to leave, she sends me with leftover pot roast and gravy and two potted plants she has transplanted. The system works.
In fact, by my keyboard on my desk are multiple sticky notes saying, "salt and pepper, clothe napkins, cell phone, ancestry, mouths of babes, and text me pullets." These are column ideas that when they come to me in my everyday life, I jot down so I remember what I was thinking about when I sit down to write.
When I taught SCHOOL for twenty years, I carried around a small planner. I know a lot of these trendy young adults do all the planning on their phone, but I needed and still need things in writing. Handwritten as a reminder. In the last month my sticky note technique has been resurrected. The problem is that in order for the planner to work I have to look at the planner. My planner can't be on my refrigerator reminding me to pick up half and half, and on my desk reminding me to write about the flower show, and in my car reminding me to stop by the bank to cash a check. But my little sticky notes can.
If I were the type to worry about getting old this issue in my life these days may concern me. But, knowing memory or the lack there of is a part of aging, it just is-what-it-is and with all there is to think about in a day and remember, why make things harder than they have to be?
Lately this has morphed into the need for family and friends to text me reminders on my phone. I will even say, "Just text me that date, and I won't open it until I get home, and I can write it down." Because if I go on and open it on my phone, it will no longer show up as an unread message, and I will forget to look at the message that reminded me not to forget the time of an appointment. Yes, it has gotten that bad.
The other day my son asked me to run to Tractor Supply to pick up 10 pullets for him when the shipment came in because he had to work. This meant leaving my flower show and running out to pick them up and putting them in a warm place in my home then heading back to the flower show which was all fine. That is until I drove all the way to the feed store where there were no pullets because the pullets were at Tractor Supply, but when I asked my son to text me a reminder, he only texted "chickens."
I had to explain to him after driving all the way back into town that the text needed to say, "Tractor Supply, 10 pullets, 2:00 pm" and not just "chickens." So, two days later he texted me "Daniel's bookbag and snack at school" because I had forgotten it in my car the day before.
So, here is how I celebrate this new hurdle of getting old. I am so blessed with my over abundant busy life filled with people and places and dates and baby chickens that I need texts and sticky notes to keep it all straight. That sounds like a good problem to have these days. And I thanked my son for his excellent skills in texting me reminders. And he just laughed and nodded his head because in 20 years his son will need to home in on his texting skills as well. Getting old is fun!
