lost words

On the way home from work the other night, I got behind a beat up blue pick-up truck, the kind that's been well loved for many years by one dedicated but hard-working owner. He had a bush in the bed of the truck, a small one in a green pot I'm sure he had just gotten from the Home Depot down the street, but it was big enough to have yellow flowers showing brightly from it's otherwise bare, straight-up stick-like branches. 

I knew that plant. I knew the name and form and habits of that bush. But the word would not come to me. As chance would have it, he was going my way, so I followed him for nearly 6 miles, all the while insisting to myself that I should be able to come up with that name. I stared at it, trying to force it, conjure it up, but it wasn't happening. We were passing yards that had five or six in full bloom-- I knew it was a native spring bloomer, always yellow, bare in the winter, which is why we didn't plant one in our front yard, but the vibrant yellow blooms turn quickly to green leaves that last only until the first frost. 

What was it called? It started with an F. I knew that much. F... i-sound. An I sound follows? Maybe. Fi... fibromyalgia. Well I knew that wasn't it. Fi.. fi... damn now all I could think of was fibromyalgia. That word, that incorrect word, that wasn't even a plant or a living thing, was stuck in my brain, like one of those little green nettles gets stuck in your socks in the summer, holding on for dear life and not letting go until you get your fingernail under it and really yank hard. 

The blue truck put on its turn signal a few miles before my turn-off. I was really frustrated now, knowing that this word was playing hide-and-seek with me, that when I got home I was going to have to consult the gardening book I had practically memorized last spring, just to look up this native bush that just about everyone has in their yard here and that I've loved since childhood. He turned, but I pressed on. 

Forsythia. Not two seconds after he turned and my staring eyes could no longer see the baby bush in his truck bed, it came to me, just magically appeared in my brain like it was there all the time, playing a joke on me, not wanting to come out completely until its physical presence was gone. Forsythia. Of course.

Where do words go? I know I can't be the only person to whom this happens. I see someone I used to know, and for the life of me can't come up with their name; I see a painting I used to adore, and no matter what I do I can't think of the artist. But I remember phone numbers from when I was a child. Memory, it comes and goes for me, like the tides but not so regular, appearing and reappearing whenever it pleases. I wonder if there's any way to gain control over it. Control over my brain? Not likely.