The problem isn’t that I am not listening, or tuning you out. But in the end, your words empty from my mind, like sand through a sieve.

I have always had a poor memory. As a child I learned strictly through repetition, and I spent countless hours beating multiplication tables, the order of the presidents, and Spanish verbs and nouns through my thick skull. Now, it’s not that I consider myself stupid, it is just how I learn. Because I know this, and am frequently affronted with the loss of memory as if a bout of amnesia took me over, I’ve learned to write inspiring moments and reminders for the future with an immediacy that borders on panicked urgency. I have found myself whipping my car off the road, barely tapping the brakes, as my wife and I speed down some remote highway in the wooded state of Maine. Barely…