My teen gets annoyed when I don't remember every little thing she has told me. I remember feeling the same way with my own mother.

Memory can be a tricky thing, especially when you start having problems with it.

For me, it started with names. Last weekend, while standing in line to see a movie, I caught the eye of someone I knew on the same line. She waved with great enthusiasm, then said "hi" and my name in the same breath. I waved back, but had no idea what to call her. Her name was gone, poof, just like that. Instantaneously removed from the name-file in my brain.

This memory thing also invaded my relationship with my 16-year-old daughter. She throws so many things at me, possibly in hopes of making a connection, but some of it just won't stick. It could be something she's told me about a new Netflix series she's into that I totally blotted out. Or something about a friend that had slipped my mind. Or some celebrity gossip she'd mentioned that I had no recollection of or didn't really care about at the time. And like I did with my own mother, she gets mad at me for not remembering.

I had the same complaint with my own mother

I've been a single mom since my daughter was five and I worked hard on being a good parent to her. My mom's forgetting things always felt like a lack of love. In other words, 'if you loved me, you'd remember the things that are important to me' was what I thought back then.

Now that I'm faced with the same situation, I know that a lack of memory isn't from a lack of love. The fact is, my brain can only remember so much at this point in my life, and it turns out, it remembers the things it needs to like paying bills on time, putting gas in the car, and the names of people I love.

After much frustration, I now have a comeback for my daughter

Finally, after feeling piles of guilt due to the backlash I receive, one day I said, "Is this something I need to remember?" after she told me some news about a friend at school. Of course, she got wicked mad when I said that. But the liberation I felt from those seven simple words spouting from my mouth extinguished a whole lot of guilt about something it seems I can't control. Or don't want to.

Memory loss, even on a small scale, is scary

Sometimes memory loss scares people. Many of us know someone who has suffered from Alzheimer's or dementia. I often wonder if that may be what my daughter worries about when I don't recall things she'd like me to remember. I know I felt that way about my own mother when her memory problems got bad, eventually slipping into dementia. It's a scary thing to have to face and deal with.

So maybe moving forward, I'll be more gentle with my daughter, saying the phrase in a more loving way, in hopes of providing reassurance for the two of us, while we both consider, is this something I need to remember?