My medicine is playing with my memories, hiding them behind tall bookcases, among the dust bunnies, and in the closet under the stairs. I still need those memories, thank you very much. Good thing I have people around me to tell me how old my dog really is, or what small town I visited last month, or how many years I have been teaching.

Today I am going to make a timeline of my life from memory and see how many milestones I can include. Then I’ll look back using my photos and my resume and fill in as much as I can. Later I’ll collaborate with my husband and he can help me with the last few years. I may be calling relatives to fill in a few empty spaces.

Hopefully by midnight, as we celebrate the New Year, I will have a more linear sense of my life than I have now. I know I like to blame my medicine, but in some ways I have always has an abstract sense of time. People have joked, when I am the designated driver, and we arrive early or late to our destination, that I think it takes half an hour to get anywhere is Austin. My husband and I have a running quiz show in which he plays host and I am supposed to match the name of the small town with a quaint feature we discovered there. I get them all mixed up, so it is a good practice of pulling the memories out of the cobwebs in my brain.

Here’s wishing you a Happy New Year, with the opportunity to make many new peaceful and loving memories.