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I've had some bad events revealed to me. I believe that God didn't reveal these thing so me until I could handle them.
Anyway, I used to go, once a week, and read to the elderly at a home. One lady would forget me if I left the room and came back but could recite a poem she wrote when her daughter was born and she recited Annibelle Lee (poem) flawlessly. And they could all yell "Evermore!" at the correct place in The Raven.
Isn't that funny how we can remember words to songs and poems like that? Somehow the brain can recall endless lyrics yet so difficult to memorize straight prose. That is so curious. I found that I remembered most of the words to old gospel hymns I hadn't heard in decades, when they were sung recently.
The other day I was thinking about our "brown-bag" lunches we'd take to school. Though we usually had a lunch box with thermos. Was there cling-wrap in the 60's or was it wax paper for our sandwiches? I know zip-locks weren't invented yet. And did mom worry about that mayo on our unrefrigerated sandwiches?
I see memory as a storage of details, including feelings, a picture to name the file. I find when I think about an old memory, or a more recent one which I'd rather not, that what comes is a succession of snapshots, like I can pull them up from the brain's processor, and remember (mostly) when and recognize the people, maybe not remember their names. All of them are linked in a giant tree inside the brain, and some had been excised. Like with my parents, before they departed, I can remember what happened, but I can't make pictures. These can dig out the feelings. But then something else is making me feel down, and all of a sudden the rush of overpowering feeling sweeps in. And when I've felt it and cried a little, it goes away.
And then there are the landmines. There are places I'd rather not go. The emotion from them has been stripped away. But when something new brings back the feeling, it all sweeps in. I sometimes grieve, or feel the non feeling I used to get through some times, and then it goes, but the shadow stays and is this little dark shadow I don't go.
I find the best trigger for memory is music. One of my most favorite times was the most amazing at the same time as everything was crumpling. While Dad was losing it, I met people who were LIKE me, who got me and I found science fiction fandom, and a family of friends who all got me. It was the most wonderous and the most heartbreaking, all at once. When I chain together one filk to the next on you tube, I remember the con suite or the filk room and what costume I was wearing and how I had found something for life.
But some things, bad ones like a long illness, except for that it existed, are locked away or erased.
I find sometimes if I really want details, its the side things which can find them easier than remembering it directly too, pared with the stuff that made it fade back into 'done and gone'.
Mostly the bad stuff, losing people and stuff and the big crashes in life, is always ready to ambush me, so I don't try to draw it closer.
Isn't that funny how we can remember words to songs and poems like that? Somehow the brain can recall endless lyrics yet so difficult to memorize straight prose. That is so curious. I found that I remembered most of the words to old gospel hymns I hadn't heard in decades, when they were sung recently.
The other day I was thinking about our "brown-bag" lunches we'd take to school. Though we usually had a lunch box with thermos. Was there cling-wrap in the 60's or was it wax paper for our sandwiches? I know zip-locks weren't invented yet. And did mom worry about that mayo on our unrefrigerated sandwiches?
Do kids even bring lunches to school anymore?
Funny, when I read that it brought back another first grade memory. My lunch bag. It was cloth covered plastic with a plaid print. It always smelled of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and apples. Because that's what I wanted for lunch every.single.day and Mom let me have it. Also tucked in there was a handkerchief with three pennies tied into a corner to pay for my lunch milk. And if I was really lucky, there would be another three pennies for a popsicle after school. This was back in the late 1940s so no such thing as cling-wrap OR zip locks. In the 60s we used mostly waxed paper for my kids and hubby's lunches.
I see memory as a storage of details, including feelings, a picture to name the file. I find when I think about an old memory, or a more recent one which I'd rather not, that what comes is a succession of snapshots, like I can pull them up from the brain's processor, and remember (mostly) when and recognize the people, maybe not remember their names. All of them are linked in a giant tree inside the brain, and some had been excised. Like with my parents, before they departed, I can remember what happened, but I can't make pictures. These can dig out the feelings. But then something else is making me feel down, and all of a sudden the rush of overpowering feeling sweeps in. And when I've felt it and cried a little, it goes away.
And then there are the landmines. There are places I'd rather not go. The emotion from them has been stripped away. But when something new brings back the feeling, it all sweeps in. I sometimes grieve, or feel the non feeling I used to get through some times, and then it goes, but the shadow stays and is this little dark shadow I don't go.
I find the best trigger for memory is music. One of my most favorite times was the most amazing at the same time as everything was crumpling. While Dad was losing it, I met people who were LIKE me, who got me and I found science fiction fandom, and a family of friends who all got me. It was the most wonderous and the most heartbreaking, all at once. When I chain together one filk to the next on you tube, I remember the con suite or the filk room and what costume I was wearing and how I had found something for life.
But some things, bad ones like a long illness, except for that it existed, are locked away or erased.
I find sometimes if I really want details, its the side things which can find them easier than remembering it directly too, pared with the stuff that made it fade back into 'done and gone'.
Mostly the bad stuff, losing people and stuff and the big crashes in life, is always ready to ambush me, so I don't try to draw it closer.
Funny you mention this. I've been listening to lots of songs by The Beach Boys and the memories are gushing like a broken fire hydrant.
By the way, your post is absolutely an amazing expression using words.
I have flashbacks all the time. I have no idea what triggers them, but suddenly I'll remember something from childhood or other era from my past. The weird thing is, I will then wonder whether that's the last time I will ever think about that memory. So in other words, it will never come back again. I'm weird that way.
Just happened to me recently. I was getting food at a Middle Eastern kosher deli. On the counter were plastic containers of what looked like chickpeas, so I asked about them. The owner said they are spiced chickpeas that they make Thursday and Friday only, for Shabbos. He asked if I wanted to try them, and put a container in my bag for free. They were really good.
But when I got home that night, a memory suddenly jumped up front in my brain. I read constantly as a child, and I remembered a book about 5 Jewish sisters living on the Lower East Side in NYC at the turn of the century. It is 1912, and the oldest sister is 12 years old. One day in the story, the father takes the girls to the market and they each get a penny to spend as they wish. One of the girls buys spiced chick peas from a street vendor. I even remember that he forms a cone made of paper and puts the chickpeas in it. Now when I was a kid, I had no idea what chickpeas even were, but I remember this.
I entered a few phrases into Google, and sure enough, up pops the book--The All-of-a-Kind Family, written in 1951, about 5 Jewish sisters growing up on the LES in NY.
Read that book 50 years ago and hadn't thought of it forever, but spiced chickpeas brought it to mind.
Another, this time my grandmother. In 1999, I took two months of family leave to help care for my 92-year-old grandmother while my 70-year-old Mom recovered from a hysterectomy. Nana and my daughter and I were all living in my parents' house. I had to make her meals as part of the caretaking. One day I happened to mention that I sometimes liked to make salmon cakes out of canned salmon, egg, and breadcrumbs with seasonings. My grandmother's eyes lit up, and she said, "Oh, when I was a little girl, my mother made that for us for lunch every Saturday!"
It was especially touching because my great-grandmother had died when my grandmother was only 20 and the oldest of 7 kids--her mother was 40 and died from a stroke in the 8th month of her 8th pregnancy.
72 years after her mother died, my grandmother still recalled her mother making salmon cakes.
Another, this time my grandmother. In 1999, I took two months of family leave to help care for my 92-year-old grandmother while my 70-year-old Mom recovered from a hysterectomy. Nana and my daughter and I were all living in my parents' house. I had to make her meals as part of the caretaking. One day I happened to mention that I sometimes liked to make salmon cakes out of canned salmon, egg, and breadcrumbs with seasonings. My grandmother's eyes lit up, and she said, "Oh, when I was a little girl, my mother made that for us for lunch every Saturday!"
It was especially touching because my great-grandmother had died when my grandmother was only 20 and the oldest of 7 kids--her mother was 40 and died from a stroke in the 8th month of her 8th pregnancy.
72 years after her mother died, my grandmother still recalled her mother making salmon cakes.
Certain smells can take me back 60 years in an instant. My mom had no sense of smell so I was her "smeller". It was a little dangerous as she couldn't smell gas or chemicals or spoiled food. I recall her cooking kidneys for the dogs...don't want to smell that again.
Music always triggers memories for me of the period when I first knew the song or when it was popular.
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