"Memories"

Reading the comments that Cory/Mary/Elly made on "The rest of the Story" post really got me thinking. I find it so interesting that 4 people who experienced the exact same repeated circumstance remember different aspects of the time, their memories seemingly even in conflict. Cory remembers walking every day til dad caught up, Elly only on bad weather days, and Mary for some reason remembers walking to the mill and meeting dad there. What I find really intriguing however is that I can't say for certain that I really remember any of it. We have all heard and laughed about Cory's frozen tears story so many times that sometimes it seems like it was a real experience for me and at other times I wonder if it is only from the repetition that it has become part of my memory?

Why do we remember things? Is our every experience stored in our brain somewhere, even those that took place when we were very young. And if they're all up there why do we recall some and not others. For example, while I have no clear recollection of walking home at 4 oclock on those winter days, I have very clear memories of sitting in that stupid pew at 8 am of the same days. Is it the significance of the moment or the event that imprints a memory more clearly in our brains such that we recall it easier. I suppose that if this were the case it would suggest that going to church was a much more emotional time for me than walking home in a sub-zero blizzard. Of course that could just be because going to mass every morning resulted in my enlistment into the alter boy ranks which got me close to some of that special kind of loving that Roo experienced in her childhood. Regardless I think there's some validity to this argument. I can tell you another story that supports it. Even though I don't think I have ever told it(or very rarely at least)thereby re-inforcing it in my memory, I believe I will never forget it. The moment lasted no more than one second and yet it still scares me to think of it. I must have been 7 or 8 years old and our Uncle Bert had arrived at our house in his car. He was whipping down the driveway past the house heading for the barn. Since just about any visitor was an exciting event for us I waited for him to pass and then jumped in behind his car to race down the driveway behind him. For some reason, and at the very last moment, just out of the corner of my eye I realized that he was pulling a trailer!! Someway, somehow I managed to put on the brakes but I'm sure that the trailer brushed my clothes. I'm pretty sure I almost died that day! My heart rate still goes up just thinking about it.

I also wonder if current experiences somehow serve to draw old memories out of us that we didn't even know we had. I know everyone flashes back to earlier times when we are triggered by our senses, particularly it seems the sense of smell, but can an event or situation actually make us remember stuff that prior to that we had no recollection of? And just to mess with your head how would you know that you had no prior recollection. After all when we are reminded of something in the past we don't usually remember if we remembered it before?

Anyway, I do have very fond memories of the Co-op where dad worked since I got to ride the 'between floors' conveyor once or twice. I'm pretty sure that Elly's memory of walking only when school closed early makes more sense than Cory's memory of walking for 2 plus hours every day.(we would have gotten all the way home). And I have no idea what the hell Mary is talking about in reference to Elly's porcupine(or do I?)....but maybe, just maybe we'll find out some time soon. Or at least if she remembers it?

“We cannot change our memories, but we can change their meaning and the power they have over us”---David Seamands

“Memory is deceptive because it is colored by today's events."---Albert Einstein

love
peter