The Sweetness of Forgetting

by Kristin Harmel

“She’s really something,” he says. I force a laugh. “Kids.” “Frankly, I don’t know how you put up with it,” he says. I smile tightly at him. I’m allowed to feel annoyed with my daughter, but he’s not. “She’s just going through a hard time,” I say. I stand up and glance toward the kitchen.

Visiting Mamie always makes me want to cry, because although the home she’s in is cheerful and friendly, it’s terrible to see her slipping away. It’s like standing on the deck of a boat, watching the waves suck someone under, and knowing that there’s no life preserver to throw in.

He said at our last meeting that her mental faculties have been going sharply downhill in the last few months. “The worst part is,” he’d said, looking over his glasses at me, “she’s lucid enough to know it. This is one of the hardest stages to watch; she knows her memory will be all but gone soon, which is very unsettling and sad for patients in this state.”

North Star Vanilla Cupcakes

How strange, she thought, that she couldn’t hold on to the simplest of facts, but the celestial names were written on her memory forever.

“You are not your mother, my dear,” Rose said gently. Her heart ached, for this—all of this—was her own fault. Who could have known that her decisions would reverberate for generations?

Her memory is all but gone, her senses completely off. Yet there are times when her eyes look as clear as ever, and when I’m sure she’s looking directly into my soul.

“I know things have been hard on you lately. But you never know what will happen tomorrow, or the next day. One day, one week, one month can change everything.”

“I was always a lot closer to my grandmother than to my mom,”

I’m in denial. That’s my general approach when things are going wrong; I simply bury my head in the sand and wait for the storm to pass. Sometimes it does. Most of the time, I only wind up with sand in my eyes.

I remember reading Anne Frank’s diary in school and studying the Holocaust in history classes, but there’s something about reading about it as an adult that has a completely different impact.

I’m fascinated by the way the old mixes with the new; cobblestone meets cement at some corners, and on others, stores selling electronics or high fashion inhabit buildings that look like they’re hundreds of years old. Having spent most of my life in Massachusetts, I’m accustomed to history being naturally interwoven with modern life, but it feels different here, perhaps because the history is much older, or perhaps because there’s so much more of it.

“You’re telling me Muslims smuggled Jews out of Paris?”

“It is doubtful that there are any records. No one speaks of it. The secrets of that time have died with that time. Today, there is much tension between the religious groups. It is impossible to know whether it is true.”

It is mankind that creates the differences, she’d told me last week. That does not mean it is not all the same God.

The Koran teaches us to give to those in need and to do it quietly, for God will know your deeds.

In our religion, we are taught, ‘Whoever saves one life, saves the entire world.’ ” Alain makes a strange strangled sound. “In the Talmud, it is written, ‘If you save one life, it is as if you have saved the world,’ ” he says softly. He and Monsieur Haddam look at each other for a moment and smile. “We are not so different, then,”

we are all speaking to the same God. It is not religion that divides man. It is good and evil here on earth that separates us.”

“Do you think we are all praying to the same God?” Rose asked after a moment. “Muslims and Jews and Christians and all the people who believe in other things?” Nabi appeared to be considering this question quite seriously too. “Yes,” he finally told Rose. “Yes. There is one God, and he lives in the sky, and he hears all of us. It is just that here on earth, we are confused about how to believe in him. But what does it matter, as long as we trust he is there?” Rose smiled at that. “I think perhaps you are right, Nabi,”

I suddenly want, more than anything in the world, to gun the engine and flatten her against the soil. Thankfully, I am not actually a murderess, so I refrain. But at the very least, I sure would like to pull her perky ponytail until she screams.

I wish for the zillionth time that I’d realized in my early twenties that having a baby with a selfish man meant that my child would always have to deal with that selfishness too. I’d been too naive to realize then that you can’t change a man. And my daughter is paying for that mistake.

‘In the United States, no one is persecuted for his or her religion. What you believe, and what runs through your blood, are only parts of you.

“I’m just saying that I think the more armor there is around your heart, the harder it is to recognize love, even if it’s right in front of you,” he says slowly.

I didn’t think I was a person who needed anyone. My mother was always very independent. And after my grandfather died when I was ten, Mamie was always busy with the bakery, too busy to tell me her fairy tales anymore, too busy to listen to my stories of school and friends and everything that was going on in my imagination. My mother had never been very interested in those stories anyhow, and gradually, I stopped telling them. I’m better off alone, I told myself as I got older. I didn’t talk to my mother or my grandmother about grades, or boys, or college decisions, or anything. They both seemed so absorbed in their own lives, and I felt like an outsider with both of them. So I created my own world. It wasn’t until I had Annie that I learned to let someone else in. And now that she’s right around the age I was when I had to learn to fend for myself, I’ve realized I’m holding on tighter, in a way. I don’t want her drifting out of my universe into one of her own making, like I did. And that’s what makes me different from my grandmother and my mother.

Breaking generational cycles.

I realize the notice is short, but I see that you are on the Cape, so the journey won’t be more than an hour or two. I live in Pembroke.” Pembroke is just off the highway on the South Shore, on the way to Boston.

“Your call for help came to me,” she says. “In our culture, that means I now have the obligation to assist you. It is a code of honor called Besa.” “Besa?” I repeat. Elida nods. “It is an Albanian concept that is derived in part from the Koran. It means that if someone comes to you in need, you must not turn them away. It is because of Besa that my grandmother and I have asked you here tonight. It is because of Besa that my grandmother and her friends and neighbors saved many Jews, at the risk of their own lives. And it is likely because of Besa that your grandmother was saved too, even if the Muslims in Paris did not call the concept by the same name as we do in Albania.

“Besa,” he says softly. “What a beautiful concept. The obligation to help our fellow man.”

“I think you’re underestimating your ability to save yourself.”

I know now that the prince is real, and that the people who love you the most can save you, and that fate might have a bigger plan for all of us than we understand. I know now that fairy tales can come true after all, if only you have the courage to keep believing.

“Life gets complicated. Circumstance tears us apart. Decisions guide our fate. But your heart will always show you true north.