The Biggest Birthday Balloon Ever

Last Thursday, Dave and I saw the Goodyear blimp pass overhead while we were walking the dogs. We had no idea who was inside but it was moving slowly – as blimps do – and we both said it’d be pretty cool to ride in a blimp just once.

We learned the next day that the blimp was carrying Helen Ruth Thrash, a local centenarian and former Goodyear employee who had always wanted to ride in the blimp. So, on her 100th birthday, her family treated her to the biggest helium-filled birthday balloon ever!

You can read the whole story here. The short version is Helen’s husband died in 1941, leaving her with two children. She had to find a job and Goodyear became her support system until she retired in 1976. As a single parent, she didn’t have time to chase her blimp dream. She was too busy working hard and raising a family.

I like Helen’s mettle. And I like that her family finally made her dream a reality. I don’t know Helen at all but the article says she is feisty and she painted her fingernails bright red for the ride. This I like, too. Women of Helen’s era know how to dress properly for a birthday bash. If she is anything like my own grandmothers, who have both passed away, I bet she doesn’t own a pair of jeans and still puts on a skirt for dinner. She probably has a supply of mints, gum, and maybe even a plastic rainhat in her purse. I bet she gets her hair done weekly at the beauty parlor. And I bet she has great stories to tell.

Which brings me to the final topic of this short post today: our memories. Helen is 100 years old. Can you imagine what she’s experienced in her lifetime? I only hope her family has captured some of it in writing or on tape.

National Geographic’s cover story this  month is on memory. Their website has an amazing interactive piece on the brain and how we store memories as well as what happens to the brain when a person has Alzheimer’s.

In fact, as you read this blog, that 3-pound, balloon-shaped mass in your skull is firing up billions – yes, billions – of neurons so you can see, read, and decide what, if anything, to remember about this blog entry. Things like this always freak me out when I think about them. Our bodies are amazing things. Our brains, even more amazing.

Back to the memory thing before I get sidetracked.

The article also mentions how our ancestors had to rely on memory much more than we do today. There were no email systems, no cellphones, no Blackberries to keep track of things for us. History was passed down to the next generation orally. People were entrusted with the stories from their elders, and they darned well better remember them or risk being thrown to the lions or grounded in the dungeon, or whatever the medieval parents did to punish young upstarts for not remembering things.

According to the article many of us have undergone a profound shift over the past millennium. We’ve “gradually replaced our internal memory with a vast superstructure of technological crutches that we’ve invented so that we don’t have to store information in our brains.”

Do these crutches essentially dumb us down? I think about it often. Are we becoming lazier because we don’t have to memorize things like we used to? I used to have to remember phone numbers but I no longer have to. My cellphone does it for me. I used to have to recall facts and dates and who won the National Book Award in 1997 (Charles Frazier, Cold Mountain). Now I can just Google it and find the answer. In fourth grade, I had to recite the Apostle’s Creed and Memorare to the Blessed Virgin Mary for a test in religion class. Now, even though I still remember both prayers, I’m sure I could find a crutch somewhere to help me through the lines.

Dave argues for technology as a memory aid. He says it allows him to forget all the unimportant fluff (phone numbers, birthday dates, my shoe size etc.) so his brain has room to store all the important stuff (gobs of sociological theory, who sang backup on Steeley Dan’s Aja, greatest outfielders of the 70s, the starting lineup of every U.K. Wildcat team since 1945 etc.).

His viewpoint could be right but there’s something to be said for the storytellers and memory keepers among us. As the article stated, back in the days when our brains were firing up more juice than our electronic gadgets, ”a strong memory was seen as the greatest of virtues.”

There is power in memory. It feeds us and informs us. It holds our history and shapes our identity. It’s an incredibly precious gift that’s taken for granted until you see the heart-breaking impact memory loss can have on a family who is caring for someone who is losing their ability to recall the past and present.

When was the last time you stopped to thank your brain for helping you remember where you left your car keys? Or for helping you remember how to walk or take a shower? Or for calling up that moment in high school when you were driving around in a blue, two-door Thunderbird on Friday night with your best friend Marla, and you had to duck down in the front seat because you didn’t want the guy you had a crush on to see you cruising past his house?

I don’t have the greatest memory in the world. There is plenty I forget on a daily and yearly basis. I’m not blessed with total recall but today, I’m thanking my brain for continuing to fire neurons, and for helping me store memories.

I am sure any time I see a blimp now, I will think of Helen’s dream come true on her 100th birthday. Because that’s how memory works and now Helen will be a part of mine.