Today’s guest post comes from Steve Grooms

My artistic friend Sue has no difficulty describing the earliest memory of her life. Sue remembers looking through the bars of her crib at flowers on the bedroom wall. The wallpaper flowers were “funny,” she recalls–lumpy things with ugly colors. Such deformed flowers could only be somebody’s idea of a joke, and Sue laughed out loud. She had seen real flowers, so elegantly formed and suffused with vivid color, while these ugly blobs were nothing like that. By working with old photos and family lore, Sue has dated that memory to a time she was two or three years old.

Some folks simply cannot retrieve early memories. A friend once told me he has no memory—no memory whatsoever—of anything before his last years of high school. I find that spooky. Most people remember events from when they were four or five. One of my friends insists she has a clear memory from when she was two. I’m skeptical, and yet I don’t rule it out. Scientists tell us that children have memories from their earliest years, but as they age children lose those first memories, replacing them with later ones.

When my daughter Molly was a toddler, her daycare mom, Julie, talked with her about a woman who lived nearby. Julie once took her daycare class to visit that neighbor, and she mentioned this when Molly was about three. “I know,” said tiny Molly. “Her dog is Samson.” Julie was gobsmacked. When Julie took Molly to the neighbor’s, Molly was an infant, so young she hadn’t begun talking, and yet she remembered Samson. Molly no longer has that memory.

My earliest memory was set in the upper half of an old duplex in Manchester, Iowa,where my mother, my sister and I lived during WW II.

I was two or three years old at the time, most likely three. My mother was using a metal key to wind the strange little cuckoo clock in our living room. The clock had a pendulum and a fat painted bluebird that wagged left and right.

“Where’s Daddy?”
“He’s at The War, Stevie. Daddy is a soldier and he is at The War.”
“Why doesn’t he come home?”
“He has to be a soldier now.”
“I miss my Daddy.”
“He’ll be home after The War.”
”But when?”

That memory surely predates my recollection of catching my first fish. My father is part of this memory, so he must have been on leave or (more likely) this happened in 1945, shortly after he came home from Japan. Our family was enjoying a summer day in Tirrill Park in Manchester. The park is bordered on the west side by the Maquoqueta River. My father set me up with a fishing rod, baiting my hook with a worm. Against his repeated instructions, I walked up and down the bank rather than sticking to one spot. Then I caught a fish, a white crappie. Several years ago I returned to Tirrill Park while researching the book I was writing about my parents. With no effort I walked to the spot where I caught the crappie.

It is harder to describe the time my grandfather bought me a “drumstick” (one of those ice cream novelties). I was four at the time. I had eaten a drumstick before, but only one. Drumsticks, like most nice things in life, seemed to my child’s mind like magical and random events. When my grandfather bought that drumstick I suddenly realized that drumsticks were a normal part of the world; you could have one at almost any time if you had money. Life was more orderly and predictable than I had understood. Joy was repeatable, at least potentially.

My only clear memory of kindergarten took place on the first day of school. I was five. Toward the middle of the day Miss Carlson ordered the kids to take a nap. I rolled out my rug next to the rug on which Susie Stoever was trying to sleep. Perhaps I should mention that Susie was a blond cutie with a pug nose. I stretched out on my rug, my head near Susie’s face. Disgusted, Susie swapped ends so her feet were at my head. I switched so we were again head-to-head. We repeated that sequence several times before Miss Carlson dragged me off to the cloak room, that gloomy overgrown closet where we stored our coats and galoshes. And there I napped alone. On my first day of school I was busted for sexual harassment!

Some of my early memories have ideas or discoveries attached to them. When I was in first grade, a kid in my class named Andy Williams (same name, but not the singer) stood before the class to deliver a report. Up on the wall above Andy was a picture of our president: Harry S. Truman. Sitting in my seat (on the far right hand side of the class, three rows from the front) I suddenly realized that that was Andy up there talking, not me. “Hey, that’s Andy! That is not me! He is Andy and I am Steve. HE has to give a report and I do not!” It was my discovery of how each human being has a separate consciousness and a separate experience of life. I leaned back with a smile as Andy quavered his way through his report.

This last memory is my favorite, and it too is hitched to an epiphany. On a rainy spring night, I was in my crib in the little bedroom that my sister and I shared in the years right after the war. I was four or five. As cars moved north along Carroll Street, their headlights shone through our cottage’s picture window and made a spot on my bedroom walls. While the cars were distant that spot would move slowly, but as the cars passed us the light would suddenly whip around the bedroom walls with startling speed. Similarly, the tires of the passing cars hissed as they rolled along the rainy street. That hissing became louder as the cars got near us and then reached a crescendo of Doppler Effect just as the autos went by us and the light spot was zipping around. I clutched the bars of my crib and gloried in this show of light and sibilant sound. “This is beautiful!” I thought. And then I thought, “There is such a thing as beauty.”

Do you have any favorite memories from early in your life?

Today’s Memorial Day guest post comes from Barbara in Robbinsdale.

One or more Baboons have expressed interest in hearing more about our son Joel, who died in September 2007 from an alcohol related accident, at the age of 26. Telling stories about Joel is one of the most healing things I do, so here you are.

Well, I finally did it. I threw out the remaining lefse.

This wasn’t just any lefse, not even just any homemade lefse. My son and I made this in December 2006, his last Christmas in the physical. This is one of my favorite things about Joel – he loved family traditions, and making lefse is something his grandpa had taught him. He truly enjoyed getting together with Family, was the one that would take videos of the little kids at Christmas and Thanksgiving, and then make video gifts for their parents. He was the fun “uncle” who would be on the floor playing with the toddlers.

When Joel was little, his favorite color was orange; I dressed him in that so he’d be highly visible on the playground. He loved cats from day one – Sox was absolutely appalled when he turned 9 months old and started walking. By the time he was eight, he was more reliable.

Like many children of Babooners, Joel put up with our beloved Morning Show (TLGMS) while growing up, and thanked me for it later – and yes, he appreciated ALL kinds of music because of it, from Classical to Frank Sinatra, Johnny Cash, the Beatles.

Music is what made it possible for us to connect when he got to be 14 – Jerry Garcia had just died, and suddenly “my music” from the 70s was in the mainstream again. In music we had something that could start us talking.

Joel was smart, good looking, funny, and he shared my sense of humor. He liked helping people, and was a good listener – ended up being the Confidant in his group of friends. He was organized (!), practical, and resourceful. He became the medic on the hunting trips – had little vials of anything they would need: aspirin, antihistamine… tucked into the “slots” on his ammo belt.

An Aquarius, as an astrologer friend would tell me, he did “march to the beat of a different drummer”. When (at age 20) he and a buddy set off to look for an apartment, they ended up buying a little house a mile from ours, and rented out a room to at least one other friend to help make payments. We saw him almost weekly for dinner, followed by watching any DVD he would bring (i.e., the entire seven seasons of The West Wing). Or sometimes we’d do a special project like making lefse.

And now, like many things, I have to let the lefse go. It smells stale and I see some (former) insects in the box. So I arranged and photographed it, then put some out for the critters and composted the rest. I still have my dad’s griddle – I might make lefse again some day, but I probably won’t do it alone.

What do you do to keep important memories alive?

Today’s guest post comes from Steve.

When my daughter graduated from college with no job prospects, she decided that living in a nice place could be a good a start on her new life. The job would come in time. A college friend, Jessie, had parents in Portland who bought a brand new apartment for Jessie in a nice neighborhood. If Molly could pay her share of the rent, which was quite affordable, the two young women would not need to settle for one of those falling-apart roach-infested apartments that are so much fun to talk about twenty years later. They took the deal.

Things went reasonably well. The two young women dealt with the usual roommate annoyances for three years. Then Jessie announced she was fed up with cohabitation and wanted her own apartment. Molly wasn’t sorry. Jess was more self-centered than a “Seinfeld” character.

Molly helped Jessie lug her heavy stuff into the moving van. A surprise visitor during this process was Louise. Louise was the neighbor who was forever complaining about little neighborhood housing code violations. If someone left a car on the street three days without moving it, Louise was sure to call and complain. If someone failed to observe recycling protocols strictly, Louise would blow the whistle on them. Louise was the neighborhood snoop and the outspoken voice of its conscience. She had fierce opinions about right and wrong, and she wasn’t shy about expressing them.

Molly was sweating like a pig as she wrestled Jessie’s dresser into the van while Louise watched. Louise cooed, “We are all SO sorry to lose you and Jessie!” Molly decided to pretend she believed that. Then Louise added, “We all thought you and Jessie were such a cute couple!”

Molly groaned inwardly. Louise (and she probably wasn’t the only one) had decided that two pudgy single women living together with no boyfriends hanging about were a lesbian couple. Molly felt insulted by that, although that was embarrassing to her since she has nothing against lesbians. And after all, what could she say? “Aww, hell!” thought Molly, “It’s just Louise!”

What Molly finally did say was, “Well, I guess there comes a time when you have to recognize that the end has come to something, even something nice.”

Jessie moved. Molly, who could not afford the whole rent herself, moved into a new apartment.

Molly got her romantic hopes up when, months later, a new young man came to work at her firm. Brian was as gorgeous as a male model. “He’s so handsome,” Molly thought, “he has to be gay!” And, alas, he was. Brian was the gayest man she had ever met.

That didn’t prevent a great friendship. Brian enjoyed Molly’s sense of humor, and she liked his company. He began dropping by her apartment after work and staying overnight. Brian took delight in introducing Molly to some aspects of gay culture in Portland. Brian called Molly his “fag hag.” He said that term referred to a woman who was a trusted friend of a gay man. When he took Molly to a club in a seedy part of town, a club where men danced provocatively and threw off all their clothes, both Brian and Molly had something to watch that appealed to them.

Some people simply do not function before their first cup of coffee in the morning. Early in the morning Brian was comatose, shuffling about like a zombie, incapable of speech. On those occasions when Brian slept on Molly’s sofa, the next morning she would drive them to work, stopping first at the local Starbucks shop.

That was where they were one summer morning. Brian, quite apart from not talking, wasn’t even making much of an effort to stand up. He was draped all over Molly, letting her keep them both upright as they waited in line to place their orders.

And then Molly saw Louise standing a few feet away . . . Louise from her old neighborhood. Louise had a look of utter horror on her face.

”Oh, great!” thought Molly. “Now Louise knows why the cute lesbian couple broke up. She has figured out that Brian is my new boyfriend. Louise has to be thinking that I was cheating on Jessie with this hunky young man, and that caused us to break up. I could explain things to her. I could tell her that Jessie and I are not gay. I could say we were never a couple. I could tell Louise that I wasn’t betraying Jess with Brian because, well, Brian is the gayest man in Portland. I could . . . awww, hell, it’s just Louise!”

Molly waved to Louise but didn’t speak.

Have you ever let a misunderstanding … stand?