So, I get magazines for free sometimes. Currently I'm at the end of a free subscription to Woman's Day and the March issue arrived today. I generally get these magazines for any interesting recipes and also as resources for my collage making. This time though there was a very short write-up that I did read and rather enjoyed about memories. I couldn't find it online, so I've typed it out here, under the cut. The Memory Keeper Looking back can be both comforting and distressing. I've learned not to dwell. By Jennifer Grant. March 2018 issue of Women's Day (pg. 62) I'm standing at the end of the driveway, hot asphalt stinging the soles of my feet. Somewhere, out of sight, an ice cream truck trills out "The Entertainer." Flying by overhead, an airplane leaves a white streak across the face of the sky. The cicadas sing their endless, grating song. I don't know why these endearing late-summer images and not others come to mind when I think about my childhood in the Chicago suburbs. That's the thing about memories - you don't know which moments will stay with you and which will fall away. Some memories bring comfort, like those flashes of happy August days 40 years ago do for me, while others - embarrassments, missteps, losses - are haunting. Memories are complicated, and as I've learned, we often trick ourselves into believing we are merely a collection of what we remember. This is how I got here, we think. This loss changed me. That moment was pure magic. Author Richard Rohr has written that the concocted self is who we think we are, but the true self is our eternal essence, our soul. I think it's in the second half of our lives when we discover these true selves. I started my 40s tangled up in my memories, my goals, my disappointments, my hopes. Then, gradually, I started to let go of the notion that what I remember of what's gone right or wrong in my life is the sum total of who I am. Now that I've entered my 50s, I've begun to recognize my biases and accept my limitations. I'm more wary about my own emotions, no longer looking to them as unerring guides. There are loose ends in my life that won't be tied up neatly, shattered relationships I can't repair, and puzzles whose missing pieces will remain lost. I've also begun to grasp that I am not - for better or for worse - that patchwork quilt of a biography that I've been reciting. I'm more than the labels I assign to myself in my Twitter profile: writer, mother of four, foodie, friend. And the same is true of everyone I know. Instead of dwelling on memories that drag me down, I choose to revel in those that build me up. I go back several decades to feel the grass under my bare feet as I catch fireflies. I time-travel to an evening when I sat on the edge of the tub as my children played. I even go back to the day when I stood quietly, graveside, after losing someone I loved. Moving into midlife with a new sense of calm, I'm able to observe what's gone on before with gratitude and to look forward to what lies ahead. Excerpted from When Did Everybody Else Get So Old? by Jennifer Grant (Herald Press, 2017). Grant is the author of six works of nonfiction and a children's book. This was a really refreshing read for me today. I couldn't say if it was because of the dreary day, though I love those, or if it's because I've been thinking about the past recently. Perhaps it's a combination of the two. Perhaps it's other things.
It made me feel a slight bitter-sweet tang of nostalgia upon reading her opening line, even though our lives couldn't be more different. I did not spend my youth in the suburbs of Chicago. I was not a kid in the seventies. The ice cream truck never came by my house. August was swelteringly disgusting in my area of the deep south. She writes it so that I'm fondly enjoying the screech of the cicada's, mixed amongst the greater portrait of late summer, even though I dislike them. Perhaps it's just me? I have this thing my mind does, where when autumn is approaching I think of the perfect quintessential autumn of somewhere far to the north; an autumn that we have never had. Then I am reminded of one of my favourite childhood shows, The Adventures of Pete and Pete in which their autumn is the autumn that I always imagine. It makes me happy and I'm excited for the season change. Only, it never does. It's stays this disgusting pudding thick glop of hot mess until sometime in November when it's just kind of cold and rather bleak. Yet, that never even enters my mind when I'm excited for autumn. So, her childhood memory has never been my childhood memory; however it is what I always wanted in my childhood. Where the weather is hot but not gross, and the ice cream truck visits and I imagine that she's got fellow kids her own again in the neighbourhood to romp around with; which was sorely lacking in my neighbourhood, so just her few words have me envisioning a perfect childhood summer, of which I know little about in these terms and it makes me happy. Is that a wacky way with memories or what? But, I was also drawn by the piece in how she reflects on memories via Rohr. Even though I'm doing something strange with memory for the examples I supplied, I do have my own memories and have separated them. Or, my brain and subconscious have separated them over the years. Into categories of good and bad. So, a particular moment in time is pure magic, and another particular moment was the lowest low; though as I've dug through my past memories I have found that sometimes both memories are connected. Happening on the very same day or in the same span of time; but it's only after all this deep thinking that I was able to realize that. For most of my life, the memories might have well been a million miles apart. Not that all of them were connected, but I'm totally onboard with this article because I can wrap my head around it so easily, because I've done the work to see it. There certainly is a concocted self and a true self. I did see myself one way because the memories I have catalogued and the ways in which they were catalogued. But since then I have discovered that it was slightly misleading and that it didn't really accurately paint a story of who I am. It's not an easy or pleasurable thing to do, this rewinding of the film to look at it better. It was difficult for me, but also freeing. Some memories were just this small repeat of something bad which wasn't helpful to me in being who I am. Rewinding to recount the full account was even harder to swallow, to remember and realize actually what went down in said edited for time memory. Some things made me cry... a lot. Some things hurt really badly. But I also didn't want to be only that person anymore. I accept what happened in those bad circumstances, since the past can not be changed, and have forgiven myself and others, and moved on. I didn't even know these snippets of memories were holding me back, until I did all that work. But I don't dwell on those small memories anymore, because I've seen and conquered that larger picture of the events. It's actually freeing to be on the other side of it now. The same can be true for the good memories. The perfect moments. One could say that I spoiled them, but I don't view it that way. Well take high school for example. I have a lot of one-off memories that are really terrific from my high school times. But instead of living in this perfect high school world, I've gone back and reviewed and 80% of everything between the ages of 13 and 18 were pretty terrible. It's just a weird and bad time for people. But, like the author, I don't want to think about all the negative things. I like the sobering realization of seeing the truth in it's entirety when I reviewed my film, but I'd rather only revisit the good things, while still not being delusional into thinking that it was a perfect time. I think it's a good balance. I'm grounded, but I can see the good side. Like the memory of taking Chemistry in school, a subject that I was petrified to take, thinking that I would be rubbish at it, and instead making out with the highest grade in the class. It's a great and happy memory for me. Does that mean that the rest of my sophomore year was absolute bliss? Absolutely not. I remember being taunted and bullied and hiding out in bathroom stalls and behind the trailers to read. I remember fights at home. As in, I remember that these things happened, but only enough to keep my head out of the clouds, to remember all of who I am and what I've gone through, but I still really want to focus on that bright spot in my Chemistry class. Besides, it reminds me that I'll never know the true outcome of something until I've at least tried it. I'm happier in my thirties than I was in my twenties simply because I reviewed the film of my life as best I could. I'm sure something was skipped over, either because it wasn't time to remember or my subconscious isn't ready for it. No one is ever perfect, but a lot of hang-ups and misery that I once felt are no longer there for this simple reason of re-evaluating my memories and choosing to stop focusing only on the negative. Besides being freeing, it is nice to time-travel back through decades for those moments that brings you happiness. Wandering the stone path in my maternal grandmothers front yard, coming up to the very large camellia bush and thinking that the strange looking roses smelled good. Even though I was smelling the Masonite plant a few blocks away and camellia's have no smell. It's perplexing as it is vivid. Or revisiting my youth and feeling the warm sun on my skin & running to splash into the cold and chlorinated swimming pools where ever I went swimming. Adults talking and other children screaming and laughing. I can go swimming any time that I want to with this memory. I think that's what this is. It's one of those ah-ha moments where everything falls into place. You have all the information already, but then someone says it in just the right way and your brain finally makes the connection you were looking for. I always loved the Lois Lowry book, The Giver since first reading it in my early teens. I liked Jonas and The Receiver of Memory/The Giver parts the best. I have finally realized that we're all Jonas/The Giver in a way. Though we don't have actual memories that one person keeps and can pass to another person where they can literally feel the water spray from the ocean or the warmth of the sun, we do actually have this ability. Our memory, while it's not real in the moment, was real once and we can remember exactly how things tasted or felt, smelled or sounded. I'm the real life Giver. We all are really. And that's the happiest and most comforting take-away that I could have received from this article.
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AuthorA girl from South Mississippi who finds herself in exploration. Archives
November 2019
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