My earliest memory is me running around the house ultra excited and yelling, “I’m going to be in Kindergarten when I’m 4 years old!!”
Clearly nothing fun had happened in my life up to that point. I remember it very vividly though – even to the point of the moment I said it. I was tugging on the curtains and looking up to the ceiling as I shouted with thrill in my little voice. At the time, September birthdays needed a decision on the parents part. We could wait until I was 5, almost 6. Or we could go early, when I was 4, almost 5. School was a few months away when I found out. The thing is…I cannot remember a single thing before that day.
Why was that memory so glaring and not even fuzz appears before it?
Another memory that came soon after that was when I typed the word @$$hole into the “your name here” section of an Atari game. I got busted of course. Whoops!
To my knowledge, nothing even remotely tragic happened to me before that first memory, but I’m not sure if I’d know either way. Something I’ve seen time and time again with us humans a compartmentalization of sorts. That is, that we separate out certain memories or parts of our lives for some reason. With many people, it’s the bad stuff. I believe that God allows us or in some cases even helps us to tuck away certain things that we might not be able to handle. A protection of some kind.
You might see this with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder sufferers who, for whatever reason, can’t recall the details of something awful that happened. It’s strange though.
Why can some people remember things from when they were 1 or 2 years old and some of us have nothing until we’re 4 or 5? I realize we’re all wired differently. For instance I cannot for the life of me remember the year of most events. It amazes me when someone gets that look in their eye, where they’re calculating it all and arrive at the answer, “Oh yeah…that was back in ’93.”
What? You can remember what year that happened even though it was so long ago? Astonishing. I have to memorize dates like my anniversary, and my kids birthdays, because there is no way I can materialize a year when these things took place.
I am completely rambling here.
Not being a fan of tossing the baby with the bathwater – I want the good stuff back. My memory is really, really good when it comes to the last few years of my life. Incredibly good considering how awful my memory is from growing up – but I get those glimpses. It’s not just a fuzzy possibility, it’s a rush of detail when it comes. Lately, I’ve been asking God to give me more of these. I want to remember more of my stories and good things that happened with my mom and dad before they were divorced. I want to grab onto the victories and the life lessons that helped me to be who I am because it’s all part of my story.
And thankfully – He’s been giving me some.
