My earliest memory is undefined as such. There is no one memory that sticks out from the rest. To me they are the pictures in the box in the attic of my relative’s houses. I look at them and understand what they are of and who is in the pictures. I don’t remember the time for the time itself.
I have always been by myself. Before my father and mother got a divorce they were always around. After the divorce my mother was around more than my father. That didn’t change the fact that I was always by myself.
The memories before the divorce are very few. The memories after are more concrete. I was nine at the time and in my own world. Puberty didn’t set in until very late and all the worry that goes with it never was my problems. I was in my own different world.
So when Proust remembers in Swann’s Way these memories to the nth detail I have to only believe him for I cannot relate to any of his emotions.
I remember images and places very vaguely. My nostalgia for certain places in time makes me now wish I had acted differently.
For instance, when I was thirteen, without a sign of pubic hair or cracking of the voice, I spent a hot summer on my grandfather’s dairy farm in southern Missouri. I have read many descriptions of what hot summers in the Midwest is supposed to entail for a young boy of such age as thirteen. I remember meeting the kids of the area and going exploring with them in the woods of the northern Ozarks. If I remember correctly there were about two boys, me making a third, and four girls. They were a collection of brothers, sisters and cousins. Some of them were my age and a few of them were either older or younger. I remember running around, exploring and going swimming with them. I don’t remember how I related to them or they to me. I just remember them being there.
Looking back this would have been a great time for me to become aware of my innocence and perhaps lose it. But I just kept swimming and running. To this date I do not know when it was that I lost my innocence. Am I still innocent? I can’t be. There must have been a time.
Throughout my growing up there has never been one person with whom I’ve emulated. When I find someone I respect I try and figure out what it is about that person that makes me respect them. I will look a this new found virtue and see if there is a way I can add this to my life. If there is I will do so. Likewise but vice versa will I do so if I meet someone with whom I cannot respect? I’ll look for that one aspect of them that makes me detest them so and then look to see if that is in my life and then remove it or change it. I do hope this makes sense.
I don’t remember his name but he was a few years older than me. He worked in this office that I was temping for. We would chat very socially at times and at times he would point out idiosyncrasies in my speech patterns. I enjoyed listening to him speak that I respected his awareness of my speech that I took to heart what he said and made changes in my speech patterns. To this day when I am conscious of my speaking I remember him.
I was only at the office for about four weeks. I have never seen him since. It is people like these that influence my life.
These days I’m always in the present rarely looking back, let alone looking forward, however for me that is a different story.
Do you know the quote about knowing history so you don’t repeat it? Well I agree with knowing of the past and remembering the past, yet repetition is not always so bad a thing. After all that’s what revolutions are all about.
