After a month of a sick child equalling very bad or very little sleep my memory and aphasia have, once again, taken a nose dive. When this happens I always start thinking about memory and memories in general.
I have very few childhood memories. I have no idea why this is but you’ll find my brother says the same thing. Makes me wonder, sometimes, what we’ve both blocked.
The memories I do have are (mostly) good ones.
I remember being in our condo in Manchester Connecticut and my dad bought a new stereo that could record tapes and my brother and I making a recording and getting called to dinner. I remember then wondering why all that time at dinner wasn’t a big empty space on the tape.
I remember my dad’s CB radio in our playroom of our first house in Westport.
I also remember having cousins or maybe friends over to stay and we were all sleeping down in that same playroom and there was a burning smell (I was asleep) and I woke up to a house full of firemen because we had placed a sofa cushion over a light and it had burned.
I remember sitting under the big tree in front of that same house crying as my divorcing parents fought in the living room. My brother was with me.
I remember the poem my step-dad wrote me when I got my stereo for my birthday. Not exactly what it said but that he went to the trouble. Something about ‘always trying to do what she aughta.’ He was lying. :O)
I remember packing my car to drive to Iowa to go to University.
And every time Adam climbs up on a piece of furniture I remember a picture. It is of me as quite a small baby, only a few months old, if that. My mom is holding me on a sun lounger in the backyard of our house in Holliston MA and my brother, who is only 22 months older than me, is in the act of climbing up to join us. Adam climbs just like his uncle.
I do often wonder, though, what I’ve forgotten…
Memory is so interesting. I have *absolutely* no memory of the fire. I vaguely remember the stereo.
And Westport was actually our 4th house. First one was in Holliston; numbers 2 and 3 were in Manchester, 4 and 5 were in Westport and Burt and I have been in #s 6 and 7 in Jacksonville.
Our first house *in* Westport, I meant.
I remember the “fire” (really just smoke, I think). But I don’t remember anyone else sleeping over, just me & Byn.
And I remember you & me doing a *really* bad rendition of the song “wildfire” into that tape machine.
God, I loved that big tree.
It might have been Linda and Billy, J, who were sleeping over. I don’t know why else I’d be asleep in the playroom?!?
I don’t remember Wildfire at all!
I loved that tree too.