Memories

Memories
I’ve read autobiographies from time to time, where the author relates vivid memories of their earliest youth. They tell in great detail of things that happened when they were barely more than toddlers. I don’t have those vivid memories of my early childhood and I don’t think most of us do. My first coherent memories, in fact, begin around the age of five, although I do have one or two fleeting glimpses of a few earlier recollections.

One such fleeting glimpse is the only real memory I have of my maternal grandmother. Unfortunately it isn’t a pleasant memory, even though my mother assured me, on many occasions, that Grandmother doted on me to a fault. No one was allowed to so much as speak harshly to me in her presence. I regret that I remember none of that. All I remember is the one time that she got upset with me.

I don’t know how old I was. All I do remember is that I was playing with a compact Mom had given me. It was gold and had a cover on it made of what can best be described as chain mail. When turned upside down the chain mail would hang down in an arc about the size of a baseball. I loved the feel of the chain on the palm of
my hand and could sit for hours playing with that compact.

One day I was playing with the compact when Grandma came along and saw me. She didn’t realize that Mom had given me permission to play with it and took it away. She then gave me a big lecture about how I shouldn’t touch my mother’s things. I remember being reduced to tears, but then the memory ends.

The next recollection I have of my grandmother is that of an old woman in a bed that had been moved into our livingroom. That turned out to be her death bed. I don’t remember her death, although she died in our home, because I was sent to a relative’s house when the inevitable end drew near. I don’t remember the funeral. I don’t remember anything else about her.

I don’t have any real memories of any of my other grandparents either. Oh, there’s a fleeting recollection of a thin man with a huge mustache puffing on a cigar in the back seat of an early fifties automobile. We’re parked beside the water at Ipperwash Beach on the shores of Lake Huron and I’m playing in the sand near the car. An old man is sitting in the back seat of the car with the door open, a cloud of cigar smoke encircling his head. He is my paternal grandfather, or so I have been told. That is the only recollection I have of him. He died when I was about three years old.

My maternal grandfather died before I was born so the only memories I have of him come from pictures and stories that my parents and other family members passed on to me. The funny thing is that although I never laid eyes on him I have a more vivid image of him in my mind than I do of my other three grandparents, all of whom I met.

I also lost my paternal grandmother when I was very young. Although she was the last of my grandparents to leave us, I remember next to nothing about her. She lived sixty miles away and only rarely came to visit us. My one memory of her involves walking in on her in the bathroom. Enough said. It isn’t a very pleasant one either.

The first real memory, with any real detail and realization of time, is of a day when I was about five. I was sick with the measles. Mom had me laying on a couch in the kitchen. Mom called it a studio couch. It was old then and it turned into a bed of sorts. I can still remember the smell of years of use and dust built up in the worn fabric. It was a comforting smell, the smell of home.

I was sleeping on and off while Mom worked around the kitchen doing her daily duties. Dad had gone off to town on some errand or other. Sometime around mid morning Dad came through the door carrying a red and white tricycle. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen in my short life. Because I was sick and the trike was new, I was allowed to ride it around the house for the next few days before it was relegated to the back yard where it eventually met its demise beneath the wheels of a tractor, truck or bus. I don’t exactly remember which.

I don’t remember my first day of school or my first report card or the first time I rode the school bus, but I remember the first time I got into trouble at school. I was a prolific talker as a child. I’m told that I still am at times. Year after year I would win awards for the best vocabulary in my class. On the day in question I was sitting in my grade-one class and for some reason that completely escapes me, I was turned almost completely around in my desk talking to the girl sitting behind me. It seems to me now that she wasn’t paying much attention to me. Probably because the teacher was talking as well.

I don’t know just how long I was so preoccupied with my own conversation that I didn’t hear the teacher, but by the time she tapped me on the shoulder she was more than a little irritated. She gently pulled me to my feet, walked me to front of the class room and had me spread out a couple of sheets of newspaper on the floor. I then spent the rest of the afternoon sitting on the floor at the head of the class, where there was no one else to talk to. It was the most embarrassing time of my young life. Unfortunately it didn’t curb my enthusiasm for conversation at inappropriate times.

I also remember my next really embarrassing moment. It happened when I was in grade-two. It was on the bus ride home. I was sitting with a cute little girl who was in grade-one. She had been chattering away all the way around the route, but I wasn’t paying much attention. She was hardly more than a minor annoyance to me. Since she was a year younger, I only tolerated her.

I guess she didn’t see it that way, because when the bus stopped in front of her house she planted a great big kiss on my cheek before getting off the bus. Everyone on the bus saw it including the driver, my Dad. I was mortified. I would have crawled in a hole if there had been one handy, but there wasn’t. I had to ride the rest of the way home blushing like Rudolph’s proverbial nose. I though my life was over, but to my surprise by the next day the only people who seemed to remember it were Dad, the little girl and me. It would all have been a distant memory in no time except for one little problem. Dad. When Dad got a hold of something he could tease you about, he didn’t let it go. He teased me about that kiss for years.

He finally let that one go when, again on the bus, another little girl professed her undying love for me to the entire world. This girl was the same age as I was and she was really cute. I never told Dad, but I, sort-of, had a crush on her too. We were only about eight years old and in no time we had moved on, to new loves, or new games. I heard the other day that she recently died of cancer. It really reminds you of your own mortality.

From then on my memories are pretty vivid and detailed. Some are good and I revisit them often. Others are sad, painful, embarrassing and even frightening, but I want to hold on to them all. I watched as my mother slowly lost all of her memories and became a shell before she finally passed away, not even knowing who she was. Too many people suffer the same fate in their last years.

The next time you encounter a memory that you wish you could forget, think those who have lost all of their memories and relish yours. Good bad or indifferent, memories are what makes each of us an individual and what form our personalities. We need our memories and I, for one, want to keep every one of mine. On my death bed, I want to be able to look back over my life and remember it all.