My mother has no idea that her ninetieth birthday is coming up. She has no notion of the time of day, the day of the week. the season of the year, the year of the century. No notion of the approaching millennium. And no idea any longer, who I am. Her forgetting of me happened just a few months ago, after I had been traveling for more than a month and hadn't been to see her. When I came back, she asked me if I were her niece, l said no, I was her daughter. "Does that mean I had you?" she asked. 1 said yes. "Where was I when l had you?" she asked me. I told her she was in a hospital in Far Rockaway. New York. "So much has happened to me in my life." she said "You can't expect me to remember everything."
