Whatever happened to that brash 13-year-old
     who shamelessly threw her arms around my neck
     and locked the gaze of her hazel eyes on mine?

Whatever happened to that 14-year-old in the Juliet cap,
     whom I sought so eagerly when the curtain parted
     at the end of the worship service?

Whatever happened to the girl whose cheek I kissed,
     leaning out the window in that precious last second
     before the train began to move
    — a kiss that would sustain me for months to come?

We were children, uprooted from parental home
     by persecution and war,
     deposited in a strange country where people spoke
     a strange language,
     and after five loveless years we had found each other.

But postwar reunion with parents, who had been denied
     bearing witness to their child’s flowering,
     was just as disruptive as the original parting.

Preoccupied with memories of suffering
     they had barely survived,
     they had little patience with my romantic awakening,
     did not rejoice with me, did not allow my adolescence
     to run its natural, happy course.

Fearful and suspicious, they maligned, blocked, warned,
     and thereby sullied our parent-child relationship.
     What a shame they didn’t simply let youth’s fancy
     bloom and wither of its own accord.

Seventy years later — years of maturity,
     settled with life partner, children, grandchildren —
     she vividly remembers that lush oasis
     in the desolate landscape of our childhood.

But the present eludes her.
     She forgets my answer
     to the question she asked just minutes ago,
     even forgets that she asked.

So she asks again,
     and asks again,
     and forgets both answer and question each time.

That’s what happened to her.
     She did not choose what to remember
     and what to forget;
     her illness mercifully chose for her.

Mercifully, because forgotten questions can be repeated,
     over and over until remembered,
     but forgotten memories of youth are lost forever.