My mother, my brother and sister-- their memories are very poor. I speak of things that happened in my youth that they have no memories of. My mother once confessed to me that she doesn't remember me being born, my brother of the many times he served as a guardian of mine in the schoolyard or my sister of the specifics of being for a period of time, my best friend, accompanying me to coffee shops and book stores. I asked her once not long ago about the time we watched an impressive performance of a local musician who played rhythmic loops and his his guitar at the same time. Nothing.
My father, he understands. I asked him once what the divorce of his biological parent of his was like and how he handled it. He spoke as though he was there, at that very moment. He knows. But, in many ways he is not like me. His memory is marked and edged with the positives. The joys. He often remarks how blessed he is and marvels at the good turns.
When I am falling asleep, I am often met with a random event from my youth. Watching the other children who grew up with the other children talk and carry on during lunch-period as I sat, read and pretended to be disinterested in the affairs of my peers. Running through the alleys between the houses of my neighborhood, trying to make it home before the three boys chasing me could catch up. Camping with friends, drinking and carrying on at that magical period in a person's life when they are equally impressionable, defined, comfortable and insecure. I wonder why these particular memories reappear to me, and if there is any significance to them... just why and what does it mean I would suddenly remember the awkwardness of that one instance I plucked the courage to pass the note to the girl whom I kind of liked in seventh grade who I 'dated' for two days.
I don't know.
Memory is a gift and a curse, in equal measure. The more vivid, the more marked with whatever emotion you happened to be feeling at the time. If your memories are like mine, you are living-- you are there again. Feeling the same thing you felt ten or twenty years ago. Good and bad.
