Memories

Memories are highly individual. Eyewitnesses to an event can have widely differing accounts of what happened. Life is like that, too.

My mother gets mad at my sister, brother and I when we talk about events that she doesn't remember and accuses us of making them up. I find myself irritated with my own children when they talk about things they did that I don't remember. After all, I was the perfect mother, always aware of where and what my children were involved in............ apparently not.

People remember what is important to them. But lots of things happen to people that are not earth shaking to anyone but them. So while I remember standing on top of the brick wall in the back of our Palais house, watching the boys playing over the line, my mother will tell you I never stood out there, seeing and being seen.

I remember some of my second grade year, because that was the year we moved from Iowa to California. I remember getting lost coming home from school in Redondo Beach - and my mother remembers it too, because she was waiting and worrying. I remember Chris Donovan singing a song during a second grade talent contest - something I would have loved to do, but would never have had the courage to actually do.

I don't remember third grade at all. My fourth grade teacher was Mr. Weed, but other than the fact that he was cool and we'd visit after school, I don't remember anything I learned that year. Mr. Trollah was my fifth grade teacher and he would write long essays on the board on different subjects and we would copy them into folders. I don't remember the topics, but I was trying to write slanted forward instead of backhand, and I would turn my folder almost upside down trying to slant the letters forward.

In fairy tales, the princess usually falls into a deep sleep sometime during the story, until her prince comes and wakes her up to get on with the rest of her life. I think our lives are like that, in that we sleep walk through parts of our life, doing what needs to be done, but nothing that is so significant that it wakes us up and turns into a memory.

So try to make memories whenever you can. And forgive those around you who have memories that are non-existant to you, but important to them. Just because you don't remember it, doesn't mean it didn't happen.