Barbara J. Hamby

Fragments of Old Memories

Today I was sitting in a chair in the Nurse Treatment Room at a Kaiser Clinic, relaxing while waiting to have my blood pressure taken. Even though I test it at home regularly, my doctor likes me to have it done by a professional occasionally. I’m deep breathing and trying to think of the ocean or some such thing.

Then I hear a nurse call out “Lorenzo.” Immediately after that sound, I hear someone whistling a tune the bugler plays at the races. I chuckle because it reminds me of a man I dated about 35 years ago named Lorenzo who loved both the horse and dog races and took me to many of them. He was so much older than I, I’m quite sure he’s no longer around. What I’m not sure of is whether or not someone was actually whistling that refrain, or if I just heard it in my head where a lot of songs hang out.

At age 80, there must be thousands of little smidgens of memory such as that one. I especially love the events that trigger memories of my travels. Those occur fairly often.

Anyway, after two tries we still couldn’t get the desirable blood pressure reading, but it wasn’t terrible.