Table talk over lunch with three friends turned, as it often does, to U.S. foreign policy. One of the friends had recently returned from a visit to Cuba. That stirred discussion of the continuing U. S. embargo and the Cubans who had left that country for Florida when Fidel Castro seized power.

This prompted me to think of friends from the island of Jamaica. When their government was taken over by leaders with Socialist principles, they also left home and, for some years, settled in Florida.

What impeded this discussion of Jamaica for me was my inability to remember the name of the then prime minister whom my Jamaican friends were fleeing. As so frequently in this situation, no matter my mental effort, I could not recall a name formerly easily available.

With some confidence, however, I announced to my friends that I would recover that name in not too long a time. And, mirabile dictu, that is exactly what happened. It took about ten minutes for me to extract, first the man’s first name, Michael, and then several minutes later, Manley.

To announce my finds and to express my delight, I broke into the general conversation with my news. A little later I topped this accomplishment by remembering that the first name of Michael’s father, who had also been prime minister, was Norman.

For me this accomplishment, not forgetting, rates the term Senior Moment. The recovery of mental data deserves positive recognition as one of the great feats of later life.

The negative use of the term, whereby many people accuse themselves of having lost their mental capacities deserves to be banished. Relish instead the precious occasions when we can reach back into the mental riches of our interior life!