Yesterday I ran a marathon, finished my PhD, lived in a foreign country where I didn’t speak the language.

Yesterday I fell in love, had my heart broken, became a mother.

My yesterdays are chock full of choices, relationships, and experiences that made me who I am today.

I want to remember all my yesterdays.

I want to remember the sound of my son Charlie’s voice as a baby – deep and expressive, wonder in every breath. I want to remember the way my daughter Izzy used to sleep on my shoulder, and then how she refused to take my hand once she learned to run. Picture books, sippy cups, the dog at our feet; jogging to the park in the double stroller, visits with Santa, pushing kids on swings. The big and little moments all add up to pretty amazing yesterdays.

I want to hang on to it all, even the moments I’m not proud of – the time I lost two-year-old Izzy for the longest minute in a crowded parking lot, the times my husband and I argued and learned to forgive. I want to remember the lessons of yesterday that taught me to be present and live in the moment.

But I don’t get to decide which memories I keep, and which ones move out of my grasp with age, or at an even faster pace with the cruel fate of dementia.

My mind can easily take me back to the beautiful view on the top of the hill outside Florence where I ran every morning of the magical year I lived in Italy. But I can’t remember my password for the online PTA directory for my kids’ school. I remember the red blouse and tulle-trimmed skirt I wore the night my husband proposed to me in front of the Nelson-Atkins Museum, but this morning I could not remember the name of our vet’s office across town.

I know it’s a natural part of aging to forget some things.

But how do you know if you are forgetting more than you should with just aging alone? Yesterday I forgot my phone in my car when I went to work, then I forgot my ear buds in my office when I went to the gym. I had to contact the department administrator at the university medical center where I work to reschedule yet another missed appointment. What’s normal? Since my Mom’s diagnosis with dementia due to Alzheimer’s Disease, I wonder. I worry. Do other people my age regularly miss appointments and forget their phones? I find it harder to remember scientific papers I’ve read, areas of my research I once knew inside and out now seem fuzzy and distant. Maybe I am going in too many directions at once and trying to do too many things in a day.  Maybe it’s the added stress of this pandemic. It could be any one or all of these things. It could be more.

My Mom’s dementia has erased whole chunks of time. Memories swim out of reach where she can no longer access them for input and perspective. I wonder if the changes are small at first, if you don’t really notice anything out of the ordinary. And if you start to notice, what then? How does that change the way you live, the decisions you make, the person you are?

I want to remember the time I saw the great pyramids of Egypt, the first word Izzy spoke, the unique properties of the major heat shock protein I’ve studied in my academic research for almost two decades. I want to remember how I celebrated my 29th birthday, how I felt on my wedding day, the joy of watching my children learn to ride a bike. I want to remember yesterday like today – all the amazing yesterdays that make a life.

I wonder…who am I without all my yesterdays?