My three-year-old is very color oriented. She identifies the world and her place in it by color.

“You need that sweater, mommy? The green one on the black hanger next to the blue shirt?”

These questions she asks, and the answers she gives, always blow me away with their incredible detail. I love these glimpses into their minds.

When she gave that specific answer, about the green sweater, I laughed and tried to remember if my other two went through any similar process. As far as I can recall, neither of them did, not exactly like this.

As far as I can recall. That’s the hitch though. My memory is incomplete. It’s not a degenerative thing I need to be concerned about. It’s normal. But, sad and frightening all the same.

Why do you think they push the baby books and other experience-capturing paraphernalia on you when you’re a new mother? Part of it is gimmick and money-making, but part of it is because other mothers have been there, and they know you’re going to forget.

I know, it seems impossible when you’re in the middle of it, that you’ll ever forget. When there is a thing–a habit, an odor, a constant repetitive action, an unchanging daily lifestyle that seems so permanent—you think that it’ll be with you forever. But, that’s the thing with children. One thing, one habit, one odor, one constant repetitive action, one unchanging daily lifestyle merges so smoothly into another that you’re just so focused on the thing facing you at the moment that you lose what you left behind. One day (for months on end) the baby is up all night and you’re crazy with sleep deprivation and you know you’ll never forget how this IS, how it FEELS because it sucks so bad. Then all of a sudden you realize that you haven’t gotten up in the middle of the night with the baby in a long time, and where did that go? It’s not that you miss it in some masochistic way, it’s just that it ended, without fanfare, without any recognition. Now, you’re on to the next thing.

If you have more than one kid, it’s hopeless. There are positively adorable things each of my kids did when they were infants, but I can’t remember which did what. Neither can my husband. We’ll notice something that the little one says or does, and it’ll spark a memory of one of the other two, and one of us will ask, “Was it him or was it her that used to do this?” And we’ll try really hard to remember. Sometimes we do. Or we think we do.

With my first, I diligently wrote everything in the baby books, and otherwise let the moments go, flow into each other, piling up years. But, they were just words. Remembering when he first ate squash turned out to be meaningless in the long run. With my second, I was wiser and knew how fast the time passed, and how short my memory was. So, I would hold her at times and think, “I will remember this,” and breathe deeply her baby scent or really just look into her face and take it all in to store somewhere important.

That kind of worked. I do remember those moments. I remember them in staggering detail. They knock the wind out of me with the their strength. I can remember the scent, the sound, the sight and the feeling of that exact moment. But, everything around it is lost. I can’t tell you how old the child I’m remembering was, or where we were exactly or what happened earlier that day or what we did just after I forced myself to lock in that moment.

Pictures are helpful, too. Pictures are kind of the opposite of that self-commanded memory capturing. I look at the pictures and the memories are not as violent to my senses, but I can remember the day, the circumstances of the picture and everything around it.

But, I didn’t take pictures of everything, or stop and demand a memory storage of everything, or write down everything. So, there are still big gaps in it. Things that I’ve seen and done and were so important and unforgettable at the time, and they’re gone. It’s just the way it is. This is not news, I’ve been at this game for thirteen years. I know how it is. Everyone who has been a mother does.

It still amuses me and frightens me sometimes when I know I’ve forgotten chunks of their lives. But, the other day, I had this experience do a 180 on me. I’ve always been looking at this idea through mom-eyes. Realizing the memories of my children that I’ve lost as a mother. It never occurred to me the same thing would happen in reverse—that a child’s memories of her mother would be just as vaporous.

It makes sense, if you think about it (which I hadn’t), that if memories of the people we hold with the highest value—our children—are so transient, then of course memories of all other people would be, too. If we work so hard to preserve moments we have with our children, those we don’t make efforts to capture will just flee.

I spent thirty eight years knowing the woman, and like I described with my children, there are some moments that I remember with shocking clarity. Photos help broaden the scene. But, it’s impossibly painful to think about all that I’ve lost. So many of the day-to-day things, that I know happened and that we lived with such urgency, are gone from me. I know this is the way it is, too. It’s just being human.

After that reverie, I looked back at my little one and saw that I while I am trying to trap and keep memories of her, because I know how this thing works, she’s just experiencing me in the here-and-now. She’s just got a life to live and things come and things go, but mommy just always is.

In pondering this Mother’s Day, I’ve decided what I want. I’d really like to spend the day with my mom. Since she died, I have had a million questions pop up that I now know will never be answered. I’d like to spend from dawn to dusk with that woman, going over photo albums and stories and make sure I’ve got it all straight. I’d also really like to just hold her one more time, breathe in and say, “I will remember this.”