Examples of recent memory-visits include vivid scenes from an operetta I did in sixth grade (including reliving my solos), embarrassment over mean moments from decades ago (involving people I haven’t seen since), walking through a long-shuttered hardware store I rarely shopped but now suddenly miss. These events don’t seem relevant to the life I live now.

It’s fair to say that I overthink just about everything, and not always in the most positive light. This explains my initial knee-jerk explanations for why these small moments in time keep popping up now:

I’m gonna die! Well, yes. You are. We all are. But most likely not tomorrow.

It’s the dementia coming for me! Possibly, but everything else seems copacetic for now, so why go there?

There’s something I need to fix before I leave this planet! Safe bet. There’s always something in my life I could have done better, and hindsight is really good at pointing out how badly I mishandled a particular situation. So, maybe this is a chance to review and repair. But also maybe there’s more to it than just making me feel bad.

One of the earliest documentations of that life-flashing-before-your-eyes thing comes from Francis Beaufort, a British naval officer who nearly drowned in 1790. He wrote that in the moments before death, every event from his life sped rapidly across his mind. Later stories from other near-death survivors supported his account.

Finally, a neurological study published in 2023 added a scientific element to this phenomenon. In this study, researchers at the University of Michigan analyzed EEG and ECG readings of terminal patients who had been taken off life support. When these patients transitioned into cardiac arrest, two of the four exhibited a surge in gamma wave activity at the back of the brain, a region traditionally associated with processing memory. Something was happening.

Science is also catching up with explanations for the cavalcade of memories that surface unbidden in our minds. As we grow older, our brains juggle fewer professional demands and family distractions. With less mental clutter, memory networks deep in our brains can more easily access our consciousness, giving us a chance to recall previously buried events in our lives.

Lives deserve examination. My general belief is that if an image keeps showing up, it wants to tell me something. It’s offering an opportunity to examine events a little more closely, to discover if there are any parts in them that require healing. (I’d certainly rather determine that now than during that last, very final life-review.) But there may be nothing wrong with just enjoying this personal version of This Is Your Life. I built it, after all. There are parts I’m proud of. Maybe it’s okay to occasionally sit back and remember without angst.

I don’t mean I find them online and print them. I don’t even photocopy from other sources. Instead, I go to the library and choose a cookbook that interests me. Then I sit down with a stack of 4×6 index cards and a pack of multicolored pens. I date each card and write where I found the recipe before copying it from book to card.

Not every recipe is copy-worthy. I like dishes I’ve never made before or an interesting take on an old favorite. If a recipe looks like something I’ll never use, it doesn’t make the cut. After all, decades of feeding my copy habit means limited room in my recipe boxes. Anything added now needs to bring something new to the table (see what I did there?).

I enjoy experimenting with new recipes, but that’s not the only reason I copy them. I copy recipes to calm the chattering part of my brain. While my active mind is occupied with inking letters onto cards, my subconscious gets a little space to breathe. Copying recipes is my version of a fidget spinner.

These recipes mark the eras of my life like rock strata. The oldest layer dates from the Set-Me-Free Era. It’s formed by recipes copied when I moved into my first apartment. Using them was never the point: they were a part of home that I wanted to take with me, a gastronomic teddy bear to carry from my old life into my new.

Next came the Friends-Are-Family Era, when a combination of beginner’s ability and limited funds led to heavy reliance on condensed soups and boxed cake mixes. A successful dinner during this era was marked by the willingness of a housemate’s boyfriend to eat the leftovers for breakfast the next morning. (To be fair, that wasn’t a particularly high bar.)

Ironically enough, an era that relied heavily on a can-opener was followed by the Can’t-Make-That Era, where chosen recipes promised culinary ecstasy but required a way better skillset than I possessed. Think anything that requires more than twenty ingredients and ten utensils (at least two of which I was guaranteed not to own) and leaves the kitchen a mess. Also think “inedible.”

Not surprisingly, very few recipes from the Can’t-Make-That Era have survived to present day.

The Feeding-Others Era has lasted the longest. Recipes have taken us to various American regions, to Europe, to the Mediterranean. We’ve visited Asia and South America while never leaving the dining room table. The recipes are responsible for an herb garden that doesn’t want to stop expanding and a love for spices and ingredients we’d never met before. It’s been a blast.

The Feeding-Others Era is waning, and I’m not sure I like the era lurking behind it. It’s not the fact that there are fewer opportunities now to share my recipes with others that makes me melancholy. It’s more that the day may come when I no longer care whether or not I share them at all.

But eras evolve in their own time, whether or not we’re ready for them. For now, I have high hopes for the Asian cookbook sitting on my counter.