Stop me if you've heard this one before

Every memory is precious.

The story my dad likes to tell begins with him drowning in Venezuela.

I’m on the shore, suffering through Manufacturing Consent. I must have read the same page a hundred times.

And every time I look up, I see my dad bobbing in the sea, waving at me.

Hi dad, I wave back, before chomping down, again, on Chomsky. I’m also thinking about the local drug scene. How good must the coke be? So pure. A delight to cook! But what chance do I have of indulging while stuck in a room at the all-inclusive with my dad?

And there he is, a speck in the sea. Still waving at me. Well, at least he’s happy.

Hi dad, I wave again. I see you already. Jesus, just let me read.

Maybe half an hour later, he finally washes up. In a black mood.

“Didn’t you see me out there?” he bellows, chest heaving.

“Yes, dad. I waved back, like a hundred time—”

“I was drowning!” he roars.

It turns out the current was keeping him in its thrall, pulling him ever farther out. All that time, he was waving for help.

Somehow, he managed to break free, looming over my lounge chair, a raging tsunami.

But that’s not how my dad remembers his near-drowning today. Recalling it from the retirement home cafeteria, his face lights up — like it’s his favorite memory.

Not long ago, Venezuela was among three or four chestnuts from yesteryear he liked to roll out on the regular — summers at the cottage, skiing in New York, the time my sister hit me with a golf club. But as time went on, dementia made its grim rounds, and his near-drowning experience took center stage.

Today, it’s the only story he tells.

Sometimes, as I’m pretending to listen, I can’t help but think that dementia is a brutal way to teach us a lesson. Our lives are a series of circles. They start off very wide — we have all kinds of stories and insights and experiences in our conversational quiver.

But, as we age, the circles get smaller. Stories begin falling out of the rotation.

Until, for my dad, there’s just the one story left. And it’s a shit story about a bad day that he’s made halcyon because it’s all he has left.

Did I want to end up like that? A shadow drowning in made-up memory?

It seemed as good a reason as any to smoke crack. The destination — complete mental and physical collapse — would be the same, anyway. So I’ll probably end up shaving years from my life. Those years are guaranteed to suck anyway. Spend them smoking crack. Don’t stress the grind of growing old.

I share these thoughts with my mom on a shopping trip to Costco. She’s not much younger than my dad. But she’s in an entirely different place.

“Do you think if I had a time machine, I should go back and warn dad?” I ask her, pushing the cart. “Maybe tell him to go ahead and smoke crack?”

“It’s not about how you’re going to end up,” she replies without taking a moment to ponder. “It’s about today.”

“If only we could have a lifetime of todays,” I sigh.

“But we do,” she offers. “Every day is a lifetime. It’s about now. This is our life.”

She’s certainly making good of it, with that effervescent brain — so unrestrained, I fear sometimes, it will go feral. She doesn’t traffic in circles.

She rarely regales me with stories from the past. Somehow, she managed to break free from the undertow of history. She’s unhitched, even if, at times, unhinged.

Final destinations are often cruel. Origins can be too. But mostly, how we begin and end is out of our control. What isn’t, though, is the space between.

At this moment, I’m pushing a shopping cart and typing these thoughts into my phone — and mom is growing impatient.

“Have you seen the cider vinegar,” she asks.

There’s a pileup in front of the free sample table. All those people blocking our way for a three-and-a-half rippled potato chips really pisses her off.

My mind wanders back to my dad.

I wonder if he really has it so bad. You could do a lot worse than end up with a feel-good story on repeat in your head. At least it’s a serviceable memory. Most of mine I’d rather be without. They’re all on crack.

The time machine probably isn’t a good idea after all.

“Where’s the sauerkraut?” mom asks.

No clue where she’s going to end up. But I like where she is right now, beside me in the aisle of various pickled things.

“You gotta stop writing in the store,” she scolds. “Hey! It’s the other way! Have you seen the Himalayan salt?”

“No…”

“Because you’re not looking for it. You’re just writing on your phone.”

I wander for a moment around the corner, which really gets her worked up.

“Just think I could be dying,” she says, catching up breathless. “You’re playing games with a dying woman. It’s not right.”

No. It isn’t. I should be in the moment. Even if it’s right here in a Costco aisle, alongside my increasingly agitated mother.

Because some day, it might just be a precious memory.