Childhood

I've been reading Annie Dillard's An American Childhood and thinking about my own childhood, remembering it, trying to put a name to it. I asked myself: What did it mean to be a child? I decided that the one thing it means for sure is that I (the child) have no memory. When I was born, I had nothing in my brain (memories) to fall back on, to tell me what was going on, and that was the case for quite a few years.

As an adult, I can remember my very first memory. I recall it vividly. I was walking down the street, holding my father's hand. I had a diaper full of doo-doo. On the top of the fence pole, there was a large Lincoln Head Penny.

I was potty trained when I was two years old, so I had to have been two years old or less. I walked at around ten months of age, so they tell me, so I might have been one or two years old. Was that my first moment of self-realization? Why did that memory stay with me for the rest of my life, and nothing much else until I was older? What was so memorable about it? I can't say. It just is. Just like a child, I just was.

Being a child means learning how to remember--to remember without remembering. We forget almost everything we remember. Yet, we remember it all. It is within us. We just don't remember it. So being a child is all about memory.

The History of My Writing (1).

As an older adult, my reasons for writing have changed from what they were when I was a teenager and young adult. They've changed even from one or two years ago, before I retired. Right now I write because it's what I do. I love writing. I cannot not write. But it's harder to write now than it was a few years ago. The drive isn't there.

I wrote my first stories when I was a fourteen-year-old. I was fascinated with telling a story, the art and the craft as well as the story. I was awed by sci/fi. I read several doomsday books and wrote a doomsday story. I was also fascinated with the stories of Edgar Allen Poe, and I wrote a horror story that my English teacher read in front of all his English classes. I had found my direction, my passion in life--writing. But I was still a teenager and was interested in many things: girls, playing football, and being on the chess team, in high school. I wasn't much of a student, though. I did admire poetry, although I didn't understand it hardly at all. I got through high school with mediocre grades. I didn't know how to study, and was more interested in going out and doing things. But, deep inside, I had the desire to be a writer--a desire that has never died.