Friday, August 3, 2018

What We Remember As Kids


With six of us kids in the family it is interesting to compare notes on our childhoods.  There was always a division of the 3 older ones and the 3 “made in Canada” as Dad used to joke.  Mostly it was just an age thing but it was also a little bit of a cultural experience thing.  We older ones had moved around a whole lot more than the others.  I had gone to 8 different schools by the time we moved to Burlington and could remember all the homes in Canada as well as our last home in Denmark (sketchy but real).  The younger ones only knew Burlington until we moved on to Winnipeg.  I can only assume that this moving around for us older ones made things a little different, we had a shared experience the younger ones would never know.  We also had the added trauma of losing our “lille soster” (baby sister).   It was an unspoken grief for our parents and we kids knew not to talk about it even amongst ourselves. 

Sometimes we question our memory, is it a true memory or has the anecdote become so vivid it feels like a memory?  I know some memories are real because I remember thinking about them when I was 8, long before anecdotes were being recounted to us of our own histories.  When I go further back than age 4 I find myself doubting the “true memory” and then I look at my younger brother John when he says he can remember coming over on the ship.  He was barely one.  I am thinking “no that cannot be true”.  He swears he can remember.  Again, no I don’t think so.  The stories have just been told so often they have sunk into your head like a memory.

Well, who am I to know the truth of it?  As Mr. Monk says “I could be wrong, but I don’t think so.”  J

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