Think back.
Long and hard. Ten Years.
Longer.
At least twenty. Twenty five. Thirty. If you are old like me.
And what do you remember?
If you are like me a lot is fuzzy.
Things that stand out aren’t exactly the kinds of things you find in photo albums.
My earliest memory is being hit in the head with a pick axe by my cousin.
I swear I heard my skull crack.
But it couldn’t have been that bad in real life because I don’t even think we went to the hospital.
Fast forward a bit. I remember my first grade teacher making me cry because I got my greater than and less than signs backwards.
I remember being punched on the playground in second grade. If I sit here long enough and try more memories will trickle in. And some of them are good and happy and wonderful. But most of them aren't.
Long and hard. Ten Years.
Longer.
At least twenty. Twenty five. Thirty. If you are old like me.
And what do you remember?
If you are like me a lot is fuzzy.
Things that stand out aren’t exactly the kinds of things you find in photo albums.
My earliest memory is being hit in the head with a pick axe by my cousin.
I swear I heard my skull crack.
But it couldn’t have been that bad in real life because I don’t even think we went to the hospital.
Fast forward a bit. I remember my first grade teacher making me cry because I got my greater than and less than signs backwards.
I remember being punched on the playground in second grade. If I sit here long enough and try more memories will trickle in. And some of them are good and happy and wonderful. But most of them aren't.
I’m sure I played lots of games of chase and at popsicles and go plenty of smiley faces on my papers. I’m sure I made new friends and wowed them with my wit and strawberry shortcake dolls, but mostly I remember when one of them didn’t want to be my friend any more. The ugly and the mean and the hurt and the rejected has a way of sticking in our brains so much stronger than the good and the easy and the everyday.
Sometimes I look at my kids and this life we have had together. And hate that they won’t remember any of it so far. That the dance parties and frogs and snow cones and forts in the living room and water balloon fights and snuggles and stolen kisses will slide right out of their little brains and be replaced by sharp words and wounds and a few traumatic moments instead of the hundreds of good normal everyday joyful ones.
And sometimes I want to force a memory. To have great moments and big birthday parties and vacations and ridiculously happy kids. And to take a billion pictures so that there will be proof. Proof that we were happy. Proof that most of it was good. But I don’t get to choose their memories. They might remember the time I let them cover me from head to toe in stickers. Or they might not. They might remember the time I lost them at Old Navy instead or yelled because I had a long day. I make a lot more dinners and beds than I make memories. I am making the everyday. And these moments still mean something even if the won’t be called up so clearly in twenty or twenty five or even fifty years.
These moments. These everyday little ones. Are shaping my kids. This is who they will be and how they will live. This will be their default. The natural rhythms and attitues and patterns that will make up their core. And surely some of these moments will sink in and stand out and fill in all the spaces between the wounds.
(and this was part 3 of momalom's five for ten. today's topic: memory. click on over for tons of other good reads)
Comments
(And if I ever held an enormous party like the one you described, I'm sure the memories would be of sheer disaster...)
I loved your photo.
Hopefully they will remember some of the laugher.
I hope that my kids remember the good things, too. I guess that's why I keep a family journal. A place to record the goods AND the bads. That way when they come to me in the future with a laundry list of complaints about their childhood, I can show them the book and gently correct them. : )
I have been speaking with my mother a lot about memory as a result of this topic. She laughs at how fickle her memory is. And swears she (and I) remember so little of the specifics. But we have both come away with an overall feeling of fondness for a time we had together as a family.
And as she says, we have our blogs now. Something she wishes that she had when she was there in the trenches of motherhood. We are cataloguing these memories here in time and space, with words and pictures, in a way that is new and beautiful. I have to believe that doing this will help to make that feeling of fondness more concrete for me and my kids as time marches on.
Lovely post.