What do you remember about being young…really, really young?
My memory already seems to fail me; I can't remember anything before my fifth birthday. I can't forget that morning, when I followed my mom around, waiting to open up my birthday gifts. It was really dreary outside and I recall standing in the kitchen doorway, holding a box and shaking it to see what was inside. I remember someone telling me, "You're five today!" and not understanding the difference between being five and being four.
I remember a kindergarten day, when I came home from school and sat at the dining room table. I said to my mom, "I can spell 'THE', T - H - E!", so proud to spell a three letter word on my own.
I remember learning to ride an old red bike on our crispy lawn. I remember Dad letting go, and falling, and getting up, and trying again and again.
I remember sitting in my mom's van with my siblings, waiting in the McDonald's drive-thru for a Happy Meal. I remember bawling in the bath tub after our first dog was hit by a car. I remember plastering my bedroom wall with Hanson posters. I remember making the greatest Lego creations of my life, only to find my brothers had destroyed them. I remember waiting for my mom to pick me up from school, and I remember after 20 minutes, calling her from the secretary's office to see if she was still coming for me.
I remember my aunts and uncles weddings and my grandfathers' funerals. I remember cousins and second cousins being born. I remember people getting their licenses, birthday parties and proms.
But I do not remember being this small.
I wish I did. Memory is such a curious thing. What recalls a moment? I see a Chrysler Voyager and imagine my family, all seven of us, squished in each seat making our way to somewhere. A piggy bank recalls all the times I dumped my many coins out on my bedroom floor and thought about how rich I was. Kermit the Frog reminds me of my sister's bedroom and her many things I admired, a collection of memorabilia and boy bands, her perfect handwriting on Lisa Frank stationery. Watermelons resonate my childhood kitchen, and my mom's collection hanging from every edge. Crab apples recall my favorite tree, a bittersweet blend of messy and operative, my crooked treehouse and a yard laced with a cream picket fence I could never see over.
When I hear childhood, I think of bomber caps and Hannah Anderson stripes, Barbie dolls with their heads popped off, Jurassic Park and dirty water in our inflatable pool — running 'round and 'round until we were dizzy and the whirling water pulled us down. I think of 1390 KRRZ radio playing the Twins game in dad's truck, the smell of grease sitting on saddle blanket seat covers. I think of Sunday Mass and sweet springs, going outside to clear the dirt for another fort. I think of insects in jars and critters in tanks and kids with magnifying glasses crucifying ants.
Memory. I'm trying to hold on to everything, but much like Billy Collins' poem Forgetfulness, the moments slip one by one to make way for new remembrances. I will never know what I was doing the day my little brother was born, or how my first day of Kindergarten went. I'm trying hard to picture myself in the old stories, of days with grandpas and family vacations, camps and games and sleepovers and school plays and…
Forgetfulness
The name of the author is the first to go
followed obediently by the title, the plot,
the heartbreaking conclusion, the entire novel
which suddenly becomes one you have never read,
never even heard of,
as if, one by one, the memories you used to harbor
decided to retire to the southern hemisphere of the brain,
to a little fishing village where there are no phones.
Long ago you kissed the names of the nine Muses goodbye
and watched the quadratic equation pack its bag,
and even now as you memorize the order of the planets,
something else is slipping away, a state flower perhaps,
the address of an uncle, the capital of Paraguay.
Whatever it is you are struggling to remember,
it is not poised on the tip of your tongue,
not even lurking in some obscure corner of your spleen.
It has floated away down a dark mythological river
whose name begins with an L as far as you can recall,
well on your own way to oblivion where you will join those
who have even forgotten how to swim and how to ride a bicycle.
No wonder you rise in the middle of the night
to look up the date of a famous battle in a book on war.
No wonder the moon in the window seems to have drifted
out of a love poem that you used to know by heart.
Billy Collins
At least I have now to remember — and the last seven years of writings to look back at…
xx
j
