Memory is Imagination

Yesterday's title was 'Diving In' and that's what it felt like. Today's is as above, here I go - hope someone else is going to have a go at this, it feels more creative and purposeful than blogging! Here is a copy of today's instructions:

Begin with the phrase "I remember" and start writing. It doesn't matter whether you stick with one memory or list several. You can retrieve memories from as far back as childhood (or past lives!) to as recently as yesterday. If you get stuck just keep repeating the phrase " I remember," in writing, until something else forms in your consciousness. Don't even be concerned with the authenticity of the memory. Just record whatever comes to you. Don't stop until you have filled two pages.

Sunday 13th May 2007

I remember the red flocked wallpaper on the staircase wall at Granville Avenue. The staircase went on for ever, a swoop of dark shiny wood and red carpet. The wallpaper was velvety and lush. The carpet was soft and deep. I sat on those stairs listening to a record; Top of the Tots, it was called and had pictures of marionette puppets on the sleeve. I must have been three or four. 'Good Morning Starshine' was playing and I was crying. Mum or Dad were mystified. 'That's not a children's song and this is a children's record." I remember the outrage, the moral justification, the sadness that it should be so wrong.

I remember listening to "Like a Rhinestone Cowboy", I think on the same stairs, but maybe in another house. I remember being captivated by the words and wanting to see a rodeo - to see if it was really star-spangled. And I remember Neil Diamond's songs. I think I remember Daddy singing 'Sweet Caroline' to me, but maybe that's a fabricated memory, one I made up when he was working abroad and I used to stare at his photo and convince myself I had forgotten what he looked like, that the man in the photo wasn't the person I could remember. I used to sit in his wardrobe and smell that special Daddy smell. I didn't like getting his letters, they placed him too far away with their flimsy paper, red and blue edged envelopes and exotic stamps.

I remember in that first house being alone in the house with Daddy, him giving me something to drink in a flimsy, tall glass, the delicate, new feeling of the thin glass between my teeth. Biting down. Glass shattering in my mouth. Panic around me, wondering why. Me, wondering why such a fuss, I was just trying it out, see how fragile it was, see what the snap felt like. Daddy, wondering why I should do that, wondering if I was hurt. Wondering what Mummy would say. In trouble as usual.

I remember in that same house a dining set in the kitchen, or was it a conservatory? The dining set make of smoked perspex, the chairs with leather seat pads set in to the perspex. Little gaps around the edge where cornflakes and rice crispies could be pushed in with a satifsying crunch. In that same house, the sitting room with the coal fire, did we really only use that at Christmas? The kittens and rabbits on my bedroom wallpaper, the view of the church out of the window and the peal of the bells on a summer evening when the day had not quite yet faded.

I remember Mrs Thompson next door, in my imagination always hoovering round and round a circular rug that was a series of ever decreasing circles. She became smaller and smaller as she vacuumed her way around. Aunt Martha and Uncle Charlie down the road, picking me up from Aunty Pat's playschool, plimsolls in a bag, and giving me chucky egg and chips for lunch. My horror at Uncle Charlie breaking the wobbly yolk of a fried egg with a crunchy home made chip and winking at me as he pinched another chip behind Aunt Martha's back. My horror at the oozing orange yolk, not daring to tell these kind old people that I disliked eggs.

I remember Aunty Pat's playschool, pretending to drive a car, holding a circular play mirror for a steering wheel, making the noise of an engine revving up through the gears, feeling my lips tickle with the vibration of the brrmm brrmm noise. Fiona wet herself. I watched with glee.

Playschool, nursery, pre-school. The language has changed but the children play the same games. Now I remember my son's pre-school. The same smell, the same kind women doing the same thankless tasks. Helping out on a rota. Changing wet pants, mopping up spilled water, cuddling tired toddlers, singing tunelessly to age-old songs. Humouring neurotic mothers. Story time and a little warm body curled up on your knee, not the usual one, today Jessica, or Amy. Someone new every time, wanting a cuddle, deciding to trust you for today. Listening to a story with thumb in mouth, hair wrapped around a finger. Giggling helplessly with silly boys doing silly actions to 'three little monkeys' and making up words like 'snoozle' and 'snoggins'. You're a snoozle, Andrew. Well, your Mummy's a snoggins. Tee hee.

I remember the wonder of watching my own toddler sleeping. I remember watching with wonder last week my own boy sleeping. When he was a baby I marvelled at his sweet breath, his curled fists, his damp hair. Last week I thanked whatever gods made it so that my little boy was in his bed, breathing deeply, (snoring like a train coming, in fact) and not lying cold like his friend Mathew, taken from his mother in a violent car crash. I remember Mathew singing loudly and tunelessly in the school choir, with such passion and feeling that we all smiled, smiled at his mother who was shaking her head and looking like she'd burst with pride.

The memory plays tricks on you, makes you remember things you wanted to happen or should have happened. I also remember things that would be better forgotten. Words that would have been better left unsaid. Harsh, unkind words from me. Home truths that cut too deep. And throwaway comments from friends, that pierced me like a honed arrow. Words that meant nothing, and yet carried so much meaning, or resentment, or jealousy or pain. Words that damaged, words that hurt.

I want to remember sunny days and the smell of a lily. Laughter and happiness, carefree chatter and picnics by a stream. My sunny, windy wedding day. I want to remember every moment of my son's precious life, remember all the funny things he said, and did. All the times he chirped up 'I love you Mummy' until it was almost irritating. He said it when he was tired, afraid, nervous, or just to fill a silence. I want to forget that too many times I said, 'Yes, yes, I know you do.' instead of kissing him and scooping up another precious memory to squirrel away for another time.

I remember right now that I am loved. That I have made people happy and proud, and while I have done exactly the opposite on so many occasions, at the heart of it when I am gone and people remember me, they will not remember a great life, one of any importance, but hopefully the bad things that I carry in my memory will not feature in theirs.