I Forget

A lot can fall into the category of memory, but the real trouble can be the things that fall out. That's the story of my life. I have so much life behind me, and ever-decreasing amounts ahead. The trouble, of course, is that over time my ability to hold on to all the memories of my life has become less than secure. I don't have Alzheimer's if that is what you are thinking. You try to remember thirty-five millennia of life and see how big the holes in that memory can get.

It started thirty-five thousand years ago, give or take a few centuries. Humanity was just barely beginning to dominate their environment. My mother was a very special woman. She could do certain things that most people thought was magic. It wasn't it was just the result of superhuman endowments of psychokinetic abilities. Like, she was pyrokinetic. You could probably imagine how people reacted to that in the stone age. My mother was the shaman of our tribe. My father was less than a Darwinian success story. He was born small and weak his heart didn't work as well as it should. My mother didn't think he would live to adulthood when he was born, but somehow he grew to manhood. He wasn't able to help hunt big game but he was a skilled trapper and weapon maker. Mother fell in love with him. They spent a brief but happy time together. One morning he just did not wake up. Mother told me that his heart finally gave up. Being the son of the chief he was buried in the back of the cave where there was no chance predators would scatter his bones.