My brain struggles to remember birthdays and anniversaries. It just isn’t wired to recall dates. They are buried deep down under so many other things. I can easily access a vast catalog of song lyrics, and an encyclopedic list of stupid things I’ve said and done. But I really don’t remember dates.

I recently wrote a poem about my great grandmother, ‘Nanny’. She had been on my mind for two days straight. I was hearing a lot of blue jays, and I had a vivid memory of Nanny telling 5 year old me that the birds were yelling out my name. So I decided to write about her. For the first time ever. 

Nanny was one of my very favorite people. She lived next door to me, and I saw her every day. She spoke to me in Italian proverbs, shared her buttered bread with me, and taught me which plants in our yard could be used as medicine. Her death was the first deep loss that I remember experiencing.  

She died when I was 8 years old, and away at sleepaway camp for the first and only time. It was the only time because I never asked to go away again. I never asked to go again because that was when the magical thinking began. I had myself convinced that if I were to go away again, someone else would die. I needed to stay home to protect my family. 

When I was dropped off at home after a week of camping, my entire extended family was there. All dressed in fancy black clothes. I thought it was a welcome home party! It was not.

When they told me the news I felt hot lava rising up in my throat. I was so angry that they hadn’t told me sooner, hadn’t brought me home for the wake and funeral. I was furious that I had not been included in the communal mourning. 

I remember missing her terribly. I was so deeply sad that I had lost my favorite person. Heartbroken for the first time. But that was such a long, long time ago. 

For some reason, all of my memories of Nanny were coming to the surface as I listened to the blue jays last week. So I wrote about her, and I posted the poem here. 

After I posted it, I texted with my mom.
‘When did nanny die?’
‘August 6 or 7. Today, I think. Yes, today.’
‘Huh. Well I just wrote a poem about her,’ I quickly did the math in my head, ‘and it’s exactly 50 years ago today.’
‘Very strange.’

Very strange, my mom said. But it’s not really strange at all. Because the body remembers things the brain cannot recall. 

The body even remembers things that the brain thinks it has forgotten. It’s called somatic memory. And it is a very real thing. Our memories live in every part of our body. All throughout our nervous system. They are flowing through us at all times. But they’re not always accessible.

Sometimes memories find a home in the body, and stay hidden there. to protect the brain. Magical memories. 

They can lie dormant forever without ever fully forming again. They can manifest in other ways, slight stirrings, vague feelings, déjà vu, veiled poetry.

Or they can be triggered by any number of things and show up as preferences, aversions, addictions, anger, depression, physical pain, even auto-immune syndromes and illnesses.

This is one of the reasons why physical activity is so good for the psyche. It moves things around. Things that get stuck. Walking, running, biking, swimming, dancing, yoga, unsticks them. Moving the memories around is therapeutic. Because the body remembers what the brain cannot recall.

Even when we don’t know that we’re remembering, we are. Even when we think we don’t remember, we do.

Because the body thinks, and it remembers too. 

Lucia Contaldi 6/14/1893 – 8/6/1976