“It’s a semi-true story, believe it or not, I made up a few things and there’s some I forgot…”
Jimmy Buffett song
Although we are only a year apart, my sister and I have some very different memories of childhood – not just points of view but entire episodes.
That came home to us on one of my recent visits to my hometown. We were talking as we drove to one of her job sites, and for some reason the conversation turned to childhood. (Of course, reminders of childhood are everywhere in my hometown, more so since Sis’s house is only a few feet from where the house where I grew up stood.)
I recounted an incident that had a lasting impact on me one that happened when we were five or six years old. I was surprised that she did not remember it at all.
Other events from childhood bubbled up, and we realized that each of us had an entire catalog of memories that the other had long forgotten.
I am sure we have different recollections of the same events, too, though we didn’t get that far in our conversation.
So we made a bargain of sorts.
I told her that I would write down some of the things that I remember and will send that collection to her so she can add her own memories and perspectives on the things that we both remember.
Eventually we will pass it all along to our brother, who is four and a half years younger. He will, I am sure, have memories that are totally foreign to the two of us.
I am up early, and sunrise lately has found me at the keyboard, savoring a cup of coffee as I engage in my own form of time travel. It is curious how one memory leads to others, and I pause to jot down the topics before they wing away.
Some of the memories are happy ones –we tend to use those to crowd out the demons from the past – and some still bring a twinge of pain. Some, perhaps, are best left buried.
I do not know what my sister and my brother and I will do with this project, assuming we actually finish. We are not writing autobiography or even a coherent narrative. Rather we are putting together pieces, rather like trying to reconstruct an old pot when some of the shards are missing. One day our children or grandchildren may want to explore the relics.
At some point I will have to decide that childhood has been covered. Not too soon, though. I keep thinking of stuff that Sis might be interested in.
“...But the life and the telling are both real to me, and they all run together and turn out to be a semi-true story.”
Contact the writer at billatthelake@gmail.com
