The medicine cabinet was partially open, and two old Ban roll-on deodorants were on different shelves. Each looked to be at least 20 years old, both from their labels and from that hard-to-define gunk that collects on stuff in a bathroom — dust, baby powder, dried deodorant or toothpaste.

In the bathroom’s florescent light I saw my first gray hair. It’s funny what lingers in your mind months later.

Just a token from the game. Who knew that 20 years later, the Dodgers wouldn’t be anywhere near a World Series…

Anyway, I read about this story earlier this month and almost didn’t post it because it’s already been discussed or tracked on other blogs a million times. But the idea of the talisman, of the item that represents both the intense love this couple had and its loss, is central here.

Perhaps when this story gets told a few millennia from now, it may well have the sort of power The Odyssey (that’s off the top of my head, although I’m sure Wagner or another Romantic wrote an opera or play that better fits this story) has for (some of) us today:

A few weeks back, The New York Times’ City Room blog had a story about Myrta Gschaar, who found out definitively that her husband, Robert Gschaar, died at Ground Zero.

About three years after September 11, 2001, Mrs. Gschaar received her husband’s wallet, which contained irrefutable proof that her husband had perished: one of the two Jefferson $2 bills that he had gotten for each of them. According to City Room, Mr. Gschaar gave his fiancé one Jefferson and kept a second for himself. “They symbolized many things: that this would be the second marriage for both them, that they were two of a kind, that it would be a second chance for happiness,” writes City Room blogger David Dunlap.

Although Mrs. Gschaar hadn’t heard from her husband since he called her to say he was safe in the South Tower, the bill made his death final. She donated both bills, along with her wedding ring, to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum.

Apparently she told the chief curator of the aforementioned Memorial and Museum: “I don’t need [the ring] anymore. I’m eternally wed to him. I want it to be with the $2 bill.”

Mrs. Gschaar now lives in Ohio.

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memory token, September 11, Gschaar, $2 bill, New York Times, Ground Zero, Love, Symbol, September 11 Memorial and Museum

Originally I was going to call this blog If I Had Alzheimer’s.

Then I read a post on Daily Blog Tips called The 7 Characteristics of Good Domain Names that recommended choosing a domain name that is short and easy to remember and spell.

I thought: If I have to think at my keyboard to type “ifihadalzheimers.com,” no one else is going to bother.

So I began thinking of potential two-word domain names that had to do with memory — because this blog plans to look at different aspects of memory (more on that later).

I had an MTA pass tacked on my bulletin board from my last trip to New York, and I thought back to the years I lived there (1988-1992), when New York was about the only city that didn’t offer a pass of some sort. You had to buy tokens, which cost between $1 and $1.25 during those years.

Because I took the bus constantly (no easy way to get from West 82nd Street to East 55th Street at 11 pm), I often bought tokens 10 or more at a time, and they jangled in my pocket if I was wearing shorts. They were known as Bullseye tokens, brass with a steel center.

I loved those things and can’t believe that I didn’t save one. I guess I didn’t think New York would start offering passes like everywhere else (or truly I didn’t think about it at all). But “Memory Token” came of it, and amazingly, the domain was available.

And here we are…

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memory, memory token, subway token

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memory token, University High School, student ID, Fall 1952