I Don’t Have the Words

THE FXBG ADVANCE MONDAY 7/13/26 MIDDAY READ

By Edie Gross, ADVANCE COLUMNIST

Vidar Nordki Mathisen/Unsplash

My husband and I were attending a party to celebrate the high school graduation of one of our nieces when he pulled me aside, nodded gently at a woman across the room and whispered, “Can you please remind me of her name?”

I glanced casually in the direction of his nod and spied the familiar face of a long-time friend of our extended family, a woman we’d sat next to or across the table from during countless holiday dinners and special occasions over the last two decades.

But try as I might, I couldn’t come up with her name either. I plumbed the depths of my memory bank to no avail. File not found.

I wish I could say this was a one-off, but after I turned 50 a few years ago, my brain began unceremoniously dumping ballast: names, dates, basic everyday vocabulary. Nouns have taken the biggest hit, and when I can’t find the word, I’ve resorted to miming or describing what it does.

That thing I pour cereal into.

That thing we dump dirty clothes into.

That thing that we put bird seed in. (The elusively named bird feeder).

Now that I think about it, the receptacle category in general has essentially been liquidated.

Proper nouns, in particular, have been all but purged. I used to keep people’s names on the tip of my tongue. That once-reliable repository is now a barren waste land, its former contents likely incinerated in the flames of a fast-moving hot flash.

I still recognize faces, but to my great frustration and embarrassment, the names of people I’ve known for years have disappeared behind some cerebral paywall to which I lack access. If there’s a password, I don’t remember it.

For the most part, I blame menopause, but it’s also possible that my memory’s frequent, unplanned sabbaticals are genetic.

I remember my dad studying notecards and quizzing himself before large gatherings of friends. Now John is married to Julie, and Bill is married to Jennifer. Who’s Linda’s husband again? he’d holler at my mom. And what’s their kid’s name?

Even my mother, whose memory was the better of the two by far, has had her moments. Shortly after our family moved to Miami in 1980, she met a fellow mom while picking my brother and me up from school one afternoon. My mom was determined not to forget the woman’s name, so she came up with a shrewd memory aide: We’d just moved to Florida where there were lots of beaches and therefore, shells. Shelly!

She was chuffed with herself when she spotted that mom a few days later and confidently shouted across the school courtyard: “Hi, Sandy!”

They’ve been laughing about that for 50 years, so it doesn’t seem to have damaged their friendship any.

What’s frustrating is I didn’t used to be like this. When I was a kid, I could memorize lengthy grocery lists with one glance. As a third grader, I mastered all the times tables faster than nearly every other classmate— except for Yang “Jim” Hsiang, who everyone knew was the smartest kid in all of Dade County.

Oddly, my brain still holds a lot of outdated, useless information: The name of the golden retriever belonging to our across-the-street neighbors in 1979 (Harvest); my childhood phone number (305-253-1332); and the overwrought lyrics to a fifth-grade chorus song (“Lo, how a rose e’er blooming, from tender stem hath sprung).

Had I been offered the option of choosing which files I wanted to delete, I would have happily volunteered all three years of middle school, multiple colonoscopy prep experiences and every time my husband and I have sat down to do our taxes. Instead, all that trauma remains top-of-mind, while current, more useful information evades verbal detection.

Despite much of our relationship being reduced to a never-ending game of charades, my husband of 18 years seems to be taking my conversational glitches in stride.

Recently, we were watching an animated show our youngest turned us onto, and as one of the show’s villains shared his plans for world dominance, I was convinced I knew who the voice actor was.

Me: Oh, my gosh, isn’t that . . .

Husband: *patiently waiting for the reveal

Me: *buffering, buffering, buffering . . .

Husband: *muting the TV to help me achieve maximum focus

Me, no closer to the name: . . . You know . . . that actor that got me-too’d a few years back . . .

Husband: *blankly staring

Me, voice rising: You know! The one from that movie!

Husband, trying to be supportive: Uh-huh, Uh-huh. We do watch movies . . .

Me, throwing my full body into the effort now: You know, the one with the . . .

And now, I’m frantically waving my right hand in the air in what I’m certain is the international sign for “When that empty grocery bag was swirling around in the breeze with a bunch of leaves, and that artsy teenager was filming it.”

Husband, clearly unschooled in international signage: Was it a tornado film?

Me, still trying: No! There was a cheerleader . . .

And now I’m miming the act of rose petals falling from the sky because the words “rose petals” are inaccessible.

Husband, doubling down on the weather motif: Was the cheerleader caught in the rain?

Me, thoroughly winded but still miming falling rose petals: No! It was a dream sequence . . .

Husband: Are you talking about Kevin Spacey from American Beauty?

Me, out of my seat now, hands above my head in the touchdown formation: YES!!! Kevin Freaking Spacey! YES!

Turns out it wasn’t him. Just some other actor who sounds a great deal like Kevin Spacey. I don’t remember his name.