I was told once that our brains are like filing cabinets. And depending on where the memory is filed, is how they come up. Sometimes they are filed by color or date or sequence. They could be filed by event or object. So, for example, if you were thinking of a woman in a yellow dress, it could be filed under yellow, dress, woman or party. And being who I am, I see not only the filing cabinets, but also the person scurrying around with the files, who I call Vern, because that’s his name. Sometimes I have to encourage Vern. Sometimes I have to thank him. Other times, like this morning, he simply makes me smile, pulling up a name I was looking for weeks ago. He waves the file overhead and grins sheepishly. “It’s Carol Feldman,” he says, the name of your junior high gym teacher. 

She was filed under her face — a face that appeared in my sketchbook. That’s why her name didn’t come to me when I was talking about the gym activity. You wouldn’t recognize her by the clothes that I painted her in. But I knew her face, and so did Vern. Immediately I was beneath Central Junior High, in the dimly pink basement that we called the girls’ gym. And Vern wasn’t wrong. For it wasn’t her physical prowess that I remember. Her athleticism. Her zip up track suits are but a blur. But I remember she was kind. That she had a gentle smile. A relief, really, from all the math problems and social studies. And so how fitting to file her by face, her kind and gentle face. I pause in my sketchbook, run down the teenage stairs, waving, “Hi, Miss Feldman, Miss Feldman, HI!”