***
One of my earliest memories is of being in the backyard of our place in Denton, Texas. I remember watching my old man digging in the yard with his shirt off and I was running around underfoot. It was a hot, sunny day. I don’t know anything about the world or what my mood was, but there was suddenly a big coiled up snake in the dirt and my dad jerked me up off the ground by my arm maybe? set me on a table or something and then raised up the shovel and brought the blade down through the snake’s body maybe once maybe a few times what I remember was he was mad and I was afraid and thrilled and sad and mad. proud of him for killing the snake and sick that he’d killed it, too. scared of the snake and scared of my father’s anger and mad he was mad at me when I’d done nothing wrong and upset that he was so upset. I think I bragged about him killing the snake to my mom but I don’t know if that’s true. Fact is, I don’t know if it even happened. I just know that I remember it, so for me it’s like it did. Like I remember him in his dark policeman’s uniform walking out to the patrol car parked in the driveway, like he was some old-timey gunslinger in the west. I remember my mom in her bee-hive hairdo and a summer dress, cat-eye glasses, the whole shebang. I don’t remember them ever saying anything to me in those days, although I’m sure they must have. What I remember is watching television in the morning before they woke up, and getting in the crib with my baby brother and probably torturing him, hoping he’d go back to wherever it was he came from. I remember dirt and sunlight and long hours of silence and being left to my own devices but who knows. I thought I was alone then and it got more like that after the divorce. My old man kind of was drawn out of my world and loomed ever larger in it because he wasn’t there. And I turned a blind eye to my mother, blamed her for his absence, set myself against her in all ways.
Now I’m an old man and I’m mistrustful of all of these memories I carry around. I am not one to dwell on the past, for me it holds little interest- but it’s unnerving to realize how little of what I have built up as the bare facts of my life ever happened at all. I have no idea what I know and what I think I remember because it’s been told to me over and over again until I swallowed it. I know I’ve layered over them again and again with new interpretations and embellishments, based upon what soothed me to believe at the time or what I felt aggrieved about. I’m still doing it. I don’t guess I’ll ever quit it altogether.
More and more my past is like flipping through the family photographs of a stranger. There’s folks in there, frozen in time, doing what they were doing once and now can’t ever stop doing, but they bear little resemblance to anyone I’d say I know now.
I don’t know if that’s sad or not.
***
Namaste.
***
The Dishwasher's Tears 
Like dreams, barely remembered. Or the shadows of dreams. I suppose this is the way it is for all of us. But I think we do actually and truly remember that which was most important. Most formative.
Yeah, I agree that we remember what’s most formative, but I have less confidence that just because we remember it that means it actually happened. Some of my daughter’s most formative memories I was there for, and I don’t remember them happening at all the way she does. Perception as a whole is a lot less reliable than our thinking mind would have us believe- after all, we’re living in the construct of the thinking mind.
I guess in that sense it doesn’t really matter what “really” happened, huh? Perception is reality to some extent.
Anyway, what really matters is not the way we think about things, but the actions we take based upon those thoughts- and you are the Queen of Good Acts.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts with me.
yrs,
Scott
Simply Awesome. You’ve captured the lack of detail in remembering. Especially childhood. I remember my dad’s voice but only choice statements. Neither do I recall my mom’s possible hysteria while arguing with him.
So you have hit a nerve with this all too familiar “snake”.
Carry on!
There’s much more I can say but the main thing is this: Take with you a few rolls of toilet paper to India. Just enough for you to have enough time to learn the left-handed “magic” trick. You can thank me later.
Safe travels, Jewel
I’m glad this resonated with you! Thanks for posting your thoughts. And thanks, too, for the toilet paper advice- I will follow that for sure!
I am in your debt.
yrs,
Scott
My memories of childhood feel just like this, as if I made them up
or they happened to someone else. And there are whole swaths that are just blank. But for the cousins. The cousins were there always. Whether or not your memories are “accurate” they are yours. I loved getting this glimpse of the world that made you.
Yes, me, too, there are huge swaths that are completely blank- even from just ten or fifteen years ago! I find memory to be a mysterious country.
Anyway, thanks for your thoughts on this. Always good to be in conversation with you.
yrs,
Scott
I just heard a neuroscientist talking about this stuff on Fresh Air the other day. He spoke of how easy it is to form the memories of children. I just heard it. This week, I think. See how my memory works?
It does seem that our constructs of our perceived reality are a lot more porous and fragile than we believe. Of course, there’s huge survival value in believing the world that our senses construct for us, and very little survival value in doubting them. Makes sense that our faith in them is nearly unshakable, even when confronted with evidence that they are quite fallible indeed.
Hope you are well and things go easy for you and yours.
yrs,
Scott
Even as eyewitnesses of our own lives, our testimony is unreliable.
I sometimes feel that remembering my childhood is like remembering a dream.
I often feel that I remember dreams more clearly than moments of my life.
The brain is a wondrous, miraculous, murky machine.
Smoke and mirrors, baby. Smoke and mirrors.
For some reason, pondering all of this instantly conjures The Police.
There’s a little black spot on the sun today.
That’s my soul up there.
That is my soul up there, brother.
Dear Scott
So thoughtful – and familiar to my own inner ramblings – these ideas about memories. When I came upon your post, I had just finished reading this exceptional article by David Carr (RIP) …
I am always glad when ideas are underlined for me – as they were with your and Mr. Carr’s reflections. The themes of memory, connection, embellishment (thinking also of Brian Williams and the collective punishment that is now directed at him – and the voices of humility that percolate through) are rich – and hold lessons about how to move through life with greater kindness and flexibility.
Glad Yolanda is home safe and sound – brave traveler – I make it only for a night at a time in my sweet (Nissan) Dolphin, Delphine.
always – thank you, Mary in Bellingham