The past beats inside me like a second heart. ~ The Sea
Heads up: I’m raising a question here that isn’t easily answered and I’m just talking through my thought process. Manage your expectations.
The first memory I recall is from an age of about three. I was standing in my grandmother’s kitchen, looking out her screen door. Turkeys were pecking at the bare patches in the yard, surface mining for grubs. Or something. The summer day was perfect. Warm, not blistering, and a soft breeze was wafting through the steel mesh. To my right stood the refrigerator, a funny little thing with rounded shoulders and huge horizontal handles. Its hum provided background to Grandma’s program on the radio. My memory does not extend to the name of the program, but it was likely Our Miss Brooks or something similar.
Nothing significant happened that day. I don’t recall any trauma. There were no celebrations. No family member told me a story about this. How could they? My grandmother and I were the only ones in the house. Why does that memory pop up sporadically? I’ll give you another example, much more recent.
I went through a financial rough patch just after my divorce, more than a few decades ago. To say that I was cash-strapped would not be an exaggeration. The kids and I always put up a fresh (real) tree at Christmas, but that year was brutal. I just couldn’t scrape the money together to buy one until Christmas Eve. That’s when I was able to locate a $5, Charlie Brown, need-a-miracle kind of evergreen. It was about 4′ tall. It didn’t look too shabby once we loaded it up with decorations, but I still cringe when I think of that. And I do still think of it. Why? It’s sticking in my mind for a reason, but what would that be?
Then there are even more obscure memories from years past that still bubble up:
- Camping near a fast-moving stream and watching my three-year-old nephew toss his stuffed bunny into the water–for a swim, I guess. My mother grabbed a broom and rescued it before it was too far gone. Literally. I don’t know what was sufficiently remarkable about that day to embed itself. Perhaps it was because Mother had access to a full-sized broom while we were camping?
- Another camping memory comes to mind. My mother had refused to take my much younger sister (also about three – is there a theme here?) to the stream to get water in a bucket. As Teresa and I were walking down to the bathhouse, she grumbled, “I hope a ‘potamus eats her.” I thought it was funny then, and I still do.
- I remember my mother scolding me for reading under the covers at night (early 60s) and I remember chalking the pavement to play hopscotch at my elementary school (late 50s). Also, strangely enough, I remember riding the school bus to a babysitter’s house after school. The lady kept a number of kids, including my little sister, and every day I arrived there just before Mother was due to collect both of us. Not weird that I remember that much, but that I recall what she did on a specific day. Mrs. R. fried sweet potatoes and rolled them in sugar. They were for her family’s supper, but she let us taste them. So. Good.
Some of these experiences were more emotionally-charged than others. I understand when a memory evokes guilt or humor or stress (finding blue bunny before he drowns). I don’t understand a random mental picture of hopscotch squares or fried sweet potatoes or a simple sunny afternoon in my grandmother’s kitchen. Were the feelings I experienced on those occasions deeper, more comforting than I can now imagine?
As mentioned in a prior post, we all have different wiring, but the basic equipment is more or less homogenous. That is, the human brain has a certain number of components in the exterior region. I’m sure Coach Phillips covered this tidbit in 7th-grade science class. Unfortunately, the penny didn’t drop until I was in grad school and read How the Brain Learns by David A. Sousa. In preparation for this blog, I used that old textbook to refresh my memory. (What, you didn’t keep your textbooks …?)
Anyway, the standard exterior brain has three cortexes and four lobes. But nestled in the interior is the “old mammalian” brain. Within it lies the amygdala. People primarily associate it with survival, if they think of it at all. That would be fight, flight, mating, or eating. All important, but there’s more to it than that.
Dr. Sousa’s research indicates that the amygdala functions as a gatekeeper for memory. Alright. That isn’t exactly how he put it, but here’s how I understand it. When a memory is emotional, our inner workings determine whether it should be kept or discarded. This is not a function we can control. We don’t have a shutter, if you will, that we can activate or deactivate during interactions with our environment. That’s a programming function and, as far as I know, we can’t force an update.
I have a bead on why I remember that hard candy Christmas and some other negative occurrences. Likely they’re guilt hangovers. The others, though – why?
My search over a number of sites hasn’t shed much light on my original question, but it did yield some fun facts. According to an article in the Smithsonian (May 2010 by Greg Miller), though the amygdala filters, it does not assign the regional location within the brain. Apparently, some memories are stored in one part of the brain and others in another. Who knew? Maybe no one, but it’s a widely held theory.
Also, there are conditions under which you might be revising your own memories. When you pull them out to reflect, the environment that you’re in at the time could force edits. That is, when you gently put a memory away, it might not be the same one you pulled out of your head so lovingly. Or brutally. Only you know for sure, but you take my point. There’s a reason old people (and I’m almost there) don’t tell stories exactly the same way every time. The more times they relate the details, the better chance there is something doesn’t go back the way it came out.
Back to the original question. Based on my limited research, there is quite a lot left to be learned about memory–even by people who are paid to know. A cognitive psychologist might have an answer, but I don’t know any people in that specialty. Not personally. In the meantime, I’ve put out feelers to the smartest people I know: a few of my grandchildren. If I find an answer, I’ll follow up in a future blog. In the meantime, I’ll enjoy my [edited] memories as they arrive.
You?
Yes! My first memory of my paternal grandfather (who died not long after this happened) was him getting my cousin Ken and me some Dentyne gum from the chifforobe in a front bedroom. He pulled the keys from his pocket and unlocked a drawer then pulled a couple of pieces out to give us. I remember thinking that gum must be very special because it was locked up! We could not have been even four years old. So many good memories of a large extended family on both sides. My brother is the storyteller and we laugh when we spend time together. There were sad times too, but I make a choice to dwell on the fun times.
Mine are mostly good, too. Even the one where Mother was scolding me for reading in bed – it just reminds me that I learned to love reading at an early age. She, of course, didn’t want me to damage my eyes. Oh, well. That ship had sailed. 😉
“I hope a ‘potamus eats her” made me laugh out loud! Thinking of all the millions up millions of events, experiences, thoughts, feelings that occur in our lives, it’s amazing how many fade away and those few that remain clear as day. Something about that moment………
Exactly. And we don’t get to choose. They’re just there. Or not. Thanks for reading!