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Not the innocence we remember our world
being when we were children.
The world we remember is innocent
because we were innocent.
Do you remember anything before the age
of five, four?
You must have thought and felt and learned
so much during those early years.
Where did the memories of those things go?
No one's memory goes beyond three and a half.
Freud called it "childhood amnesia."
Freud, being Freud,
said we repressed early memories
due to the discomfort of our sexual awakening.
Later psychologists ---
without any data to support their theory ---
said that due to lack of focus,
children could not form stable memories until the age of seven.
The truth is that there are far more links between our brain cells in our earliest years
than in early adulthood.
Our earliest memories
are will o wisps blended from genuine recollections,
narratives told us by others, and imaginary scenes churned by our unconscious mind.
Now, scientists believe that
as a forest can hold only so many trees,
the hippocampus can hold
only so many neurons.
Sadly, we cannot trust the few distinct memories
that survive the stormy cycles of growth and decay in our infant brains.
Some of them may be partially or even completely fabricated!
WHAT IS YOUR EARLIEST MEMORY?
DO YOU TRUST IT?
Yes, absolutely, Roland. Lots of them between the age of 5-7. Earliest, Mum, barefoot, stepped on a snake and screamed. I screamed, too. I’m terrified of snakes. Dad crunched on onions from the garden like apples. Same with beets. I was in the garden shed with Dad, talking about something, and I started to stammer. He slammed his fist on the potting table, and shouted NO, not once looking at me. I never stammered again. I remember that the start of that stammer was like my brain looping, like a vinyl 45rpm stuck in a groove. I remember it clear as day. What do you remember?
ReplyDeleteMy father, enraged that my mother was divorcing him due to his alcoholism, sweet-talked my baby sitter into thinking he had reconciled with my mother. Him driving me to the roughest part of Detroit, leaving me on the street, and driving away as I ran after his swiftly disappearing car, screaming "Daddy! Daddy!"
ReplyDeleteI spent 6 weeks on that street at the age of six, being cared for a disabled street person before she turned me in to the Salvation Army,
I give all the profits from the sale of THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH to the Salvation Army by the way.