A face materializes from the fog within your brain. The features start to sharpen, revealing that auburn hair you remembered from childhood. Just as the nose and eyes begin to come into focus the face vanishes leaving you with nothing but a blank emptiness in the mist.

“Shoot. What was her name again?” You say, scratching your head.

We’ve all been there. Someone recalls a person or an event from long ago, and we delve into the archives in our memory, walking down aisles we haven’t perused in what feels like forever. We finally locate that thought we think will give us the answer, dusting off the cover and popping it open to find the pages blurred and the book thinned since we picked it up last.

This is simply a fact of life that happens to the best of us, so how do we keep those books thick and aisles well cared for? Here are a few thoughts.

1. Keep a journal. Occasionally write down an exciting event from the day or week. You can look back fondly in a few years and recall those times with ease.
2. Reconnect with the people you enjoyed in your past. We have so many resources for reaching out these days that it probably won’t be hard to locate or connect with that person.
3. Spend more time with the people you care about! If you are still graced with living grandparents, spend time with them and ask them to recall times when you were a child (heck, times when they were a child). It will most likely spark some memories you haven’t thought of in a while.

Time waits for no one, but what an amazing gift that we can use our minds to go back to those precious moments, or, with enough time, allow that featured face AND name to emerge from the fog.

Image: The foggy Oregon coastline, taken in October, 2022.