I tried, I really tried. I have an iPadmini that takes pictures and people told me to take pictures and show them where I was. It took a lot of effort and I didn't succeed as you will know if you followed my blogs. I had to remember to take Minnie with me, and to charge it , and not to use up the battery reading the New York Times (I got it daily online), And then when I was out there, wherever, gazing at something, I had to remember to take a picture and that was even harder than remembering and then when I was back in my stateroom I had to transfer the pictures to my computer and then I had to figure out how to send them to my blog - and I often managed only to send a diagonal line drawn across the screen. And then -- after a while -- I thought, why do I need a picture of this? Aiming and focusing and figuring out what to do when I could be just looking and gazing and loving seemed a difficult choice to make.

I managed to send a few pictures and I have more and I'll try to figure out how to send them, for what they're worth. I still prefer to hold things in my memory and Ii'm getting choosier all the time about what I want to keep, not just pictures but things. I have come home determined to throw more stuff out. What about souvenirs? you ask. A souvenir, as you know, and according to the online dictionary, is "a thing that is kept as a reminder of a person, place, or event." When you've lived as long as I have that can add up to a lot of things. I found myself increasingly resistant to tschotschkes as well as to pictures. My children are going to have enough trouble as it is to sort out my remains, not my remains, but my reminders -- Spelcheck just presumed I meant remains not remainders. Reminders is better.

So here is an event not immortalized in an iPad moment. I went on a river cruise of the Waluah River (I think that's how it's spelled); I'll have to check) -- remember? -- that time when I couldn't see but I could hear the howling monkeys? The trip was lovely: the heat was gently eased and dispelled by the faint breeze generated by the motion of the boat. A jungle enclosed us on either side, giant ferns and plants I couldn't name. I gazed and gazed, and thought of a cold fjord I shivered by a couple of years ago now when I circumnavigated Newfoundland. The foliage was far different, and crags and rocks vied for attention as opposed to ferns, macaws and monkeys (that I never saw). But I was there, fully there. And the two experiences, vastly different and worlds apart, layered themselves into my consciousness and into my memory.

Not, however, into my iPad.

This is the blog I tried to write the other day when I was deleted. Maybe "It" was trying to tell me something.

I evoked Nora Ephron (may she rest in peace) who first opened the door to fame with a piece she wrote on breasts that was published in Esquire magazine. She described the dismay of all flat-chested women in a society of males who prize the appearance of a woman in full lactation. I was ahead of her time, i.e. older than she. I grew up during WWI when the ideal woman's bustline resembled the nose cone of a B52. I did chest exercises every night in the bathroom, trying to strengthen the muscles around the breasts to encourage them to stand at attention. I went to a designer to have custom-made brassieres made: lace-up (the back) ones that I was taught to drop my breasts into and then lift them up, as I laced them tight. I wore empire-style dresses (we wore dresses in those days) to emphasize my silhouette.

The only times I ever had what you might call full, hard breasts was when I was nursing my four babies, about six months each. By that time I had learned to make rueful jokes about the advantages of small breasts: 1) I could climb trees, easing my chest over branches that might be awkard for a more encumbered woman; 2) I could carry books or groceries in my arms without hindrance; 3) I could snuggle close to a man when dancing, which I loved. (I have always enjoyed concave men for this reason; men, on the other hand, seem to prefer bouncing off the pillowy front of a larger woman); 4) I could see my feet.

This latter advantage occurred to me later in life as my well-endowed consoeurs developed larger assets than they were able to handle gracefully. I actually sympathized with them when I was on my cruise. An abundance of women with an abundance of "soft, protruding organs on the upper front of their bodies" (the dictionary definition for well-endowed) served as prominent reminders to their husbands as to why they were married to them, years ago. The budding brides with the attractive pouter-pigeon breasts had turned into galleons in full sail. But their menfolk, bless them, matched them pound for pound with large, protruding bellies. I don't think they could see their feet, either.

I'm just saying.