What Do You Know by Heart? Laura J. Oliver

Here is what I know by heart: the multiplication tables, the planets in the solar system and the Pledge of Allegiance. I know what you’re thinking: 

That’s it?

My friend Margaret knows The Gettysburg address, all the state capitals, and can list all the Presidents of the United States in order. That’s the difference between Holton Arms and public school.

I’ve had to resort to tricks to learn things by heart. I know the notes on the musical staff because the space notes spell “F-A-C-E.”  Mr. Brown taught me this at my piano lessons in his home behind the Harundale Mall, where every week we pretended I had practiced. 

I know that “the quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog,” contains every letter of the alphabet.

I also know the difference between a fox and a dog in the first place: 3 beers.

 But I’m wondering why, if we use our brains to memorize, we say we know something by heart?

I can recite all the verses to, “Mandy was a little Bahama Girl” because my older sister used to sing me to sleep accompanying herself on her ukulele. We were probably around 5 and 9 at the time. No one could doubt the sincerity of her performance which was awesome, although the song was unbearably sad. Spoiler alert. Mandy dies. In childbirth, yet! 

I also know all the lyrics to, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone” for the same reason. Spoiler alert. They’re dead, too. (Gone to graveyards, every one!)

 And that all-time hit, “What Have they Done to the Rain?” I’m thinking you can guess what they’ve done to the rain.

I’m not as good at memorizing as I once was. A few passwords. My son’s new address. My youngest daughter sings on Wednesday nights at a neighborhood music venue called Slam Run. I made it a point to unobtrusively memorize both night of the week and location in case I could slip in the back unnoticed some evening to hear her perform. Only it’s not Slam Run. It’s Slash Run! See? 

And my poor daughter-in-law tries to teach me easy, memoizable steps for posting on Facebook, then Instagram, then LinkedIn, in her beautiful, lilting New Zealand accent, and when she’s done, I’m staring at her thinking, “My goodness you’re pretty.’” 

It was insufferably hot in the house in which my sister sang me to sleep. No air conditioning. Our parents had moved east from the Midwest in order to live on tidal water. Unable to afford a waterfront house, they’d bought an old barn and racing stable on 3 acres of riverfront near Gibson Island. The barn was dark green with white battens and sat on a rise above Rock Cove. From November to March migrating swans blanketed the inlet, pink lady slippers bloomed near our forts in the woods. 

Our parents spent the next decade of our childhood renovating the barn, constructing an exquisite home with built-in window seats, a breakfast room, and handcrafted cabinetry. My sisters and I each had a dormered bedroom of our own. 

They enclosed the pasture so we could get a horse. They built a pier so we could have a boat. 

But as my parents built their dream on a tidal river, they deconstructed their 20-year marriage one disappointment at a time. A month after my tenth birthday, they divorced.

Maybe that’s why my sister’s songs were so sad. 

I think maybe how the brain memorizes and how the heart memorizes are two different processes. One requires effort, and I’m not good at it, but it’s useful. You might need to know how to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius one day. 

But the heart memorizes without conscious effort—the way it beats to keep you alive. That’s why, though the barn is gone now, hundreds of swans still bob snowy-white in the icy cove.  I smell creosote on the pier pilings, know where pink lady slippers grow in the woods. 

And a sister still sings in a dormered bedroom.

Laura J. Oliver is an award-winning developmental book editor and writing coach, who has taught writing at the University of Maryland and St. John’s College. She is the author of The Story Within (Penguin Random House). Co-creator of The Writing Intensive at St. John’s College, she is the recipient of a Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award in Fiction, an Anne Arundel County Arts Council Literary Arts Award winner, a two-time Glimmer Train Short Fiction finalist, and her work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Her website can be found here.