In a dream last night, a friend pointed to the vertical groove between his nose and lip and asked me for the word identifying it. I couldn't recall no matter how hard I tried. I learned the word in the third grade, when I was eight years old, but I just couldn't name it. I woke up at 3:30 a.m. in a Porto, Portugal hotel room, realizing I couldn't recall the word in my waking life either. So I looked it up on my phone as my wife slept peacefully beside me. Philtrum. A word I have not used, or probably seen, since I learned it more than six decades ago. How could I forget? My name, Phil, starts the word!
In a sweat, I started going through other visible body parts: eye, iris, pupil, lens, cornea, eyebrow, eyelash, then down to my foot, heel, Achilles tendon, ankle, ball or plantar fascia, toes, instep—what's the formal word for instep? Another one that sent me to my Google assistant: dorsum. Darn, another forgotten word! I was experiencing a waking nightmare. Was I at the doorstep of dementia? I kept naming body parts, like a child counting sheep, until I fell asleep.
I woke up a few hours later pleased that I recalled philtrum and dorsum, but doubting I'd remember them for long. My minor difficulty made me think of the poem "Forgetfulness" by Billy Collins. When I first read it more than thirty years ago, I found it amusing, but it reflected my reality more and more as time passed.
When a more focused temperament grounded me, a familiar adage came to mind: If you don't use it, you lose it. Philtrum, philtrum, philtrum, philtrum. Dorsum, dorsum, dorsum, dorsum.
