On Playing "Memory" with My Six-year-old Grandson (or How to Stay Young?)

One of Kathan's Christmas presents last month was the game of Memory.

Something older people (at least this older person does sometimes) tend to worry about is their memory. How good is my memory? How quickly or slowly am I remembering things? How quickly or slowly am I losing my memory? Should I be playing crossword puzzles or Sudoku, or taking special vitamins or secret-formula concoctions, or eating certain foods, all to help save my memory? What will happen to me if my memory fails? These are not questions that are easily answered. And, the thought of losing my memory is scary.

Playing Memory with my grandson gives me much to think about. We've played the game maybe thirty times now, and Kathan has won twenty-nine of those games. I won my first game just a couple of days ago. How? It was plain dumb luck. So even older people can get lucky.

Kathan likes to play against me because, and I admit it, I'm easy to beat.

The question is: do I have a poor memory? I honestly don't know.

The first draft of this post was written a couple of years ago and never posted. Bad me, right. I'm not going to say I forgot about it, but maybe I did. Anyway, it seems just as relevant (to me) now as it did then. We have played more games of Memory since then, and, yes, he still beats me every time. Now we also play other games, games I fair better at: Connect Four and Trouble. But Memory is still my nemesis. Ugh. Where are my memory pills?

Humpty Dumpty

I clearly have the memory, around age 4, of lying in bed in the dark. I believe my parents and sister also slept in their own beds in the same room, as it was a very small house. As I looked toward the window, there was Humpty Dumty sitting on the window seal, filling up the window.

Did I exist?

Tanya Reimer brought up a good point in her comment on my post. If you don't remember it, does that mean it didn't happen? So, I'm in a dilemma here. You see, I don't remember anything from age 3 or 4. Does this mean nothing happened? Does it mean I didn't exist at that time? I think something did happen at age 3 and 4, because my parents tell me so. (Does that give me legitimacy?) They tell me they bought me a dog. They called him Jip, because they paid so much for him. And I ran over him with my tricycle (he lived, no serious injury). I do not remember this. It did not happen.

Memories. Mind Over Matter?

When I was three or four years old, I was playing in the sand outside the three-decker house I lived in. It was a nice sunny day, not a foggy day, or rainy day, or dark day, but a clear warm day in Jacksonville, Florida, and I was playing in the sand with another boy, a black boy. I remember this distinctly. There is not a shadow of a doubt in my mind. My parents say it never happened. In 1949 or 1950 it would have been highly unusual. But I remember it. Did it happen? Or is my mind playing tricks on me? Am I confusing one thing with another? Am I merging memories that have nothing to do with each other? Is this an example of mind over matter? The logical person would say, 'Richard, it never happened'. A more imaginative person might say it did happen. I consider myself both logical (with some fallacious thinking along the way) and imaginative (I write fiction, after all). I say it did happen. How do I know? I remember it.

Giving Birth is Hard; Being Born is Easy

I'm participating in a blog hop from Jane Ann Mclachlan called October Memoir and Backstory Blog Contest (or, at least, I'll participate in some of it; we'll have to see if I make it all the way). So, here is my first post (concerning age 1-2).


I clearly remember the day I was born. It was a cold day in November. Everyone was nervous: my mother, the doctor, the nurses. (Where was my father?) They were all worried but me. I knew everything would turn out all right. I was so happy to be born. I knew I would have a magnificent life, full of exciting adventures; by the way, being born is the first great adventure, is it not? (And, yes, those adventures did come true, but that's another story.) All they could think about was will I be a boy or a girl. Ha, ha. I kept them waiting and guessing until the last second. All I could think about was why is this happening. Why all this fuss and bother? What's so special about being born? Everyone's born, right? We all move from darkness to light, right? (Of course, we all move from light to darkness, eventually, but that's another story.) There is so much to say about being born--the noise, the wetness, the pressure, the cry--yes, the cry, the first sound we make--that makes everyone happy and relieved. At first, crying is a wonderful thing. Your mother, your father, everyone, comes to you when you cry. (There's a time when that changes, but that's another story.) So my first day of life was a great adventure that made everyone happy. Isn't that the point of being born?

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.