For me, thinking about this started with an article I read when I was still pregnant with Penny. In it, the author confessed that he had but one memory of his father who died when the author was 4. He remembered his father cutting meat for him on his plate. That's it. His own twin sons had just turned 4 and the point of his article was a confession of how he'd been obsessed with worrying about the things his sons might remember of him.
I wouldn't say that I'm obsessed with the concept, but it does make me sad sometimes that if something happened to me not just tomorrow, but any time in the next year to year and a half, Penny would likely have little to no memory of me. That's awful to think about. To know that I fed her, bathed her, hugged her, read to her, loved her every day of her life to this point and she won't remember a single moment of this time when she's older. Or maybe through the vagaries of the brain, she'll remember one random snapshot of a thing. Or maybe she'll remember exactly one thing - me yelling at her. These are morbid thoughts, I know. But on a different level, they truly encapsulate parenting.
For my own part, I have a fuzzy memory of holding my baby brother in my lap (with a grown up seated on either side of me) which means I had to have been around two. I also remember being at a golf course with one of those big plastic toddler golf clubs and my mom was there holding Chris in her arms so, again, maybe 2 or 3 years old. I also distinctly remember being knocked into a swimming pool when I was 3 or so. I also remember some of the subsequent swimming lessons. Now that I'm considering things I think that I have a fair amount of memories from the 3 to 4 year age range, and I definitely remember kindergarden pretty well. But aside from one or two fuzzy memories, not much from the age Penny is now.
No comments:
Post a Comment