Jack Nicholson says that he can remember all the way back to the moment of his birth. This should be taken within the context that he achieved this realization when, by his own admittance, he was on LSD. He was also raised by his grandmother and told that his birth mother was his sister because she had given birth to him when she was so young. I write all of this as a means of providing some background to Jack's statement. Most people have strange memories and disjointed elements of their early years. Try not to judge Jack. Being fully aware during your birth is uncommon, (OK, uncommon as in a captured Big Foot creature or political agreement). I assume that if I did remember that moment, I would have a feeling of confusion and more than a bit of aggravation. I actually try to rewind my old memory movie tape to see when were my first memories. I feel less like someone watching a movie, and more like an old movie editor picking up bits of cut out film tape that's been thrown on the floor and all I get to watch are the bits and pieces of little use. Here are a few examples: • Kindergarten fall fist fight - I think that when I was maybe four years old in Naperville, Illinois, I got in a fight on the playground and lost. If that was true, it would be the beginning of my career of non-professional fighting career losses. Maybe I won? I'm not certain, my memory tape is scratchy, like the now muddied but often watched Zapruder film from the Kennedy assassination investigation. If I did win, then that raises my career to a single win, sadly damaging my perfect record of losses. • Late to school in the winter - Stern voices around the dinner table are memories that are sticky. They seem to hang around in the corners regardless of reason of origin. One winter, I think the same one of the single round playground fist fight, my brother and I were late to school and the school called. It was a very windy, snowy day. I have no idea why we were late, how late or if anyone said anything to us about this. It was 1969, shouldn't everyone been concerned about things like Viet Nam, rather than if two, five year olds were 8 minutes late to Kindergarten?
• Crawling through the hedges in our new house in Omaha - The first day out to play in our new house in Omaha, Nebraska, my brother, sister and I ventured into the enormous hedge that separated us from the house next door. We did not live in an English Manor. This was a working class neighborhood and the hedge was overgrown, to my child's mind it was probably 11 feet tall. We crawled under a break and ended up in the yard next door and met another kid our age, Doug.
• Kickball in our back yard - This was the 10,000 hour rule made real. (Side reference to the idea that true mastery of a skill occurs at the point of 10,000 hours of work at that skill, made famous by Malcom Gladwell). We played kickball every chance we could in our backyard with the kids in the neighborhood. I can remember a blur of quickly played footage in my memory movie.
• Mrs. Anderson, my 2nd grade teacher - She was yelling at me for turning my volcano clay project upside down, leaking out the baking soda and vinegar drops onto the floor. Anyone who has ever watched or made a volcano project knows that these two ingredients foam up and create a volcano spewing over the top, illustrating the whole idea. She must have been in the final three for consideration as actress for the witch in Wizard of Oz, (that bitch should be dead by now, not that I hold a grudge because that would be petty, especially if you hold it for almost 50 years). I wonder about all of the fantastic things I have forgotten. As I write this, the spider web re-spins itself and more strands of memories knit together. Playing on a pee-wee baseball team that won 4 championships in part because of my willingness to sit the bench the entire season. Getting my tonsils taken out and how all of the promised ice cream didn't make much difference. For me, the memory is a messy bowl of ingredients, more like one of the large kettles that the three witches stir in. Whole ideas, memories and stories will emerge in a complete and indelible panoramic view as the memories stew. In other moments, puffs of smoke pop bubbles out of my past that I can only guess the context, players and value. This gloppy stuff in the heated kettle I call my memory is not sharp or dependable. I know people who can recall to the date and hour all sorts of things that have happened. Who was at what Thanksgiving celebration in what year, what they wore and where they sat. For good measure, they discuss the game that was watched on the television and who had to leave early. This could be 15 years later! I am envious. I cannot remember what I ate for lunch yesterday. I wonder what my children will remember about their childhood. As parents, we try so hard to create memories that will last forever for them. As parents, we want them to experience a life that has a huge bowl of stardust moments that they will reflect upon and shape their understanding of….what? I guess of what great parents we were maybe? What an ideal childhood should look like? Whatever the intentions, they will grow up, like we did, with memories. A couple of differences will be digital documentation. They will have pictures, videos, online collections and the linking of their lives to other peoples’ lives through the same types of recordings of their lives. Their memories will be linked to the images only, or will there be any left-over places for things not caught through a lens? I was thinking about this specifically for my son Zach. He grew up on the transitional cusp between not having a digital recording device in everyone's hand, the smartphone, and having it. Up until he was about ten or so, he will remember only what comes out of the memory kettle and bubbles to the top, or the few static pictures that have been developed. From that point on, there will be a vast array of scrapbooks, pictures, videos and other digital captures that he can hit “recall” to see, all of them time and location stamped. This will automatically provide him a level of accuracy to the moments and a timeline to the occurrence so clear that his own memory will become unnecessary. My daughters already have this world. They were born into the digital world and have little choice about how their memories will be digitally captured and supplemented Do you wonder what your kids will remember? Do you remember what your parents wanted you to remember? I wonder if Zach will remember the undocumented things - • We hiked in the woods when he was four, five and six. They were behind the townhouse we lived in. The trails would eventually lead down to a creek that was slow and shallow. It was good for chasing frogs, looking for small minnows even though the water was so murky. We could jump across the small rocks to the other side through the water and if he dropped in he would sink to his knees, no more than mid-thigh in rainier seasons. The creek itself was a quarter mile at most from our back door through those woods. We'd grab long dead branches and use them as staffs. We would follow all sorts of "trails" around. Zach would lead and I would follow. • I don't expect him to remember me catching him as he rolled off of a top stair when he was one. We both got lucky. I was coming in from outside and had just turned around, his mom had turned her back for a second and he just pulled away and down he was headed. I jumped and made my only memorable one-handed football catch when I got to him before he hit his second stair bounce. • A Tae Kwon Do tournament when Zach at less than ten broke three boards to win the trophy. He had to perform a couple of back kicks and a spinning front kick when compared to another competitor. The other competitor did his kick routine which was a little less difficult, but he made all of his kicks. Zach performed all of his and won. After the competition, I said to him, "I didn't think you had ever landed all three of those kicks before." Zach's response was, "I hadn't, but that was what it was going to take to win." We just don't get to control memories as well as we would like to, at least I don't. Mine or anyone else's. I'm not advocating LSD, I am just curious how far back my memory might go if I spent some more time searching it. I do not know if I would get anything from the experience. A lot of therapists dig through those film clips to determine how a person is shaped and how to influence that person's future. I don't know. It seems that the clips come to me when I need them and others never come back at all. I do know that my memories and my parents’ memories of my childhood are very different. They have each said or done brilliant things that became foundational lessons for me. When I remind them of these, they look at me blankly and say, “I said what?” The reverse is true as well when they tell me, “I always told you…” and I have no idea what they are talking about. I do not look forward to this conversation with my children. I have said some really good stuff and I just hope they didn’t miss it.