If you had amnesia and were granted only one thing to write down from your memory, what would you write?

I'm not positive my grandmother knew who I was, but she always smiled and patted my hands just like she used to, so I don't think it mattered.  My mother didn't like to visit the nursing home.  She had a phobia about any hospital-like place combined with an acute sense of smell, so Mom was always dancing on her toes, edging towards the exit whenever we visited.  Gram was always nice.  Always friendly.  Always.  Except in my mother's tales of her childhood.  I wondered if that's the way it always went: time mellows all.

Gram was in the hallway, lined up against the wall with three other old people in their wheelchairs, too.  At least, in the wheelchairs of the moment.  Nothing is permanent in a nursing home.  Nobody owns anything exclusively.  The clothing you came with finds it way to other people, and you appear dressed in a sweater you never saw before, but, of course, in this ward, it didn't matter.  Nobody remembered.  Not only wheelchairs and clothing, but glasses and even teeth traveled.  Nothing, especially memory, was permanent.

I knelt by Gram's chair to be at eye level and let her know I was there.  I knew we wouldn't stay long as Mom already had her hand over her nose.  The other old people in the chairs made noises and looked in our general direction.  "Hi, Gram, it's June."

Gram turned her dark brown eyes, ringed with the blue of age, and smiled, her front tooth missing.  That was new.  Gram's hands were still strong and, even now, warmer than mine.  "So cold!"  Maybe not even remembering I was her granddaughter, Gram still chafed my hands in hers to warm them.

"You look good, Gram," I smiled.  She did.  They'd given her a haircut that she'd never chosen, but that suited her.  Nobody in a nursing home got the perm or color they used to get.

Gram looked down at my arms across the afghan in her lap and said, "You're so white!"

"Yeah, I know," I said.  "It runs in the family."