Trekhprudny Lane

I've been fascinated lately with alphabet books and wanted to write about those, but after logging on, I left a pot on the stove that boiled down to a sooty crust and smoked up the kitchen, and having had to open the only window that lacks a screen, I am now preoccupied with the cats possibly falling out. I'm told that I dove out the window of my parents' second-story apartment at eighteen months. Perhaps that explains the fear. And maybe also the forgetfulness.

I have always been absent-minded. I'll remember to pack extra wipes but not my wallet. I've given doctors my incorrect age without meaning to. I've left bath water running until a pond, a pond complete with surface ripples, formed on the floor and the neighbors downstairs knocked on the door. Worse, I did this while living in New York, where the first thing you're supposed to grasp is how to cohabit tall stacks of boxes. If I feel hot or chilly while walking outside, I often check my watch to see the temperature -- I have done so all my life. I have not yet forgotten either of my children, at least not for more than a minute or two, and surely there's a grace period on that. 

So. Over the years, living with a handicap, one develops coping strategies and a sixth sense for danger. Hopeless with names, I've become devious in avoiding having to produce them in conversation. I depend absolutely on detailed lists and piles -- setting out ahead of time everything I might need, and forbidding anyone to touch, even when the tower falls over and blocks the front door. There's a time window, between five and ten minutes I think, that spells trouble for me: the time it takes the tub to fill, or tea to cool, falls somewhere outside my awareness of the present but short of my capacity to remember -- so I cannot be trusted with baths or tea. 

Been about twenty minutes -- I'd better go close that window! Alphabet books tomorrow. Perhaps.