Organizing my mind

I must have been about eight when I read a passing reference to a boy who organized his mind every evening. Unbelievably, the writer barreled on without explaining how, but the project seemed so essential that I decided I must undertake it and for some reason assumed the project must be secret.

So, how to start? Innocent of neurology or brain structures, I pictured a good-sized card catalog (this was pre-home computer age) with memories on something like index cards. So, lights off in bed, I pictured my card catalog. Now it couldn’t be exactly me organizing it since I was picturing this. I needed an agent and posited a small, gray-haired man in a gray suit. Gravitas, you know. He could move effortlessly (on skates?) opening card drawers, pulling out cards clearly randomly placed and taking them to another drawer in another aisle. I could just imagine his thinking, “What a mess this mind is.” Presently he stopped, clearly needing more specific overall instructions, a system.

But exactly how does one organize a mind? I considered some options.

Chronologically? I had a few vague impressions of my first year, hardly enough for few cards, let alone a drawers. Then more and more as I got older. But I didn’t remember all of every year. And memories of my mother, say, would span many years. And was me at eight remembering me at six a new event, needing a new card? Hard to say.

By person? Drawers for each family member, neighborhood friends, school friends, etc. The little man obediently scuttled about. Wait!

Would seasons be better? Christmas, summer, spring, but should these be sub-divided by year . . . or activity, like summer games with my neighbors Holly and Philip? Or . . .

Place? Home, school, camp, church, stores, but what about friends in home and school?

Feelings? Happy, sad, frightening time? Boring times? Being sick, being well.

Activity? Reading, school, studying, board games, outside games, eating, climbing trees?

You see the complication. The little man grew frustrated and pretty soon I fell asleep, exhausted.

I tried again the next night. More confusion and . . . I gave up. My mind was a mess and there was no help for it.

But . . .

Years later I met the exact type of my little man, the curator of the Furness Shakespeare Library at the University of Pennsylvania. I had occasion to go often in my grad school years. I don’t remember his name, but he was diminutive, endlessly helpful, with an encyclopedic knowledge of the large collection. He wore an odd little gray suit with a stand-up collar, so retiring and officious in his manner that, the story went, he was in the elevator when a Big Professor looked up from his tome to say, “Four,” as if the curator might announce, “Fourth floor, philology, linguistics, ladies lingerie. Watch your step.”

Once there was a horrific rainstorm with damage all over the campus. I went up to the Furness to find the Persian carpets pulled back, large fans blowing, and the curator mopping a skim of water under the  Globe Theater display case.

When I offered my sympathies, he stilled the mop for a minute, whispering, “I tell you, Miss Schoenewaldt, when I came in this morning and saw the damage, I almost needed some liquid refreshment myself.”

Yet he took time, as always, to consider my research question, scuttle through the stacks, and produce exactly the texts I needed. He was too big to fit in my brain, but if I’d been brave enough to explain my mind-organizing problem, he could surely have suggested the perfect system.

About Pamela Schoenewaldt

Pamela Schoenewaldt, historical novels of immigration and the search for self in new worlds: WHEN WE WERE STRANGERS, SWIMMING IN THE MOON, and UNDER THE SAME BLUE SKY (all HarperCollins).