“How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.” — Paul Bowles
This morning as I was vacuuming, I “sucked” something up. I heard it rattle and clatter through the pipe as it headed for the bag. This is an event normally unworthy of a blog post, but it was the thing that happened next that surprised me: in that moment I went straight back to being ten years old.
I got a Barbie for Christmas. She was “Crystal” Barbie and I loved her completely. Her dress was iridescent, white in some lights, purple in others. Oh, she was beautiful. Straight out of the box, she had golden hair and the most wonderful clear shoes – like glass slippers – I think her eyes were even purple. I remember playing with her and trying to keep her perfect, but being traumatized when I lost one of her shoes. I can still see myself lifting the hem of her dress and realizing that the shoe was gone. I looked everywhere but I never found it. We wondered if it had been vacuumed up, and my Mom checked, but it was too late. The bag had been changed. This morning, almost 25 years later, a clattering vacuum brought that memory back in vivid detail.
Why do we remember these strange small things? Why do I struggle to remember my Opa’s voice when I can hear my grade one teacher telling me that I had messy hair? Why did all of the times I was told I was smart or got good grades not stick as deep as the one ‘C’ that I got in writing in grade six? Is my attempt to decide on my truth possible? Can we rewire our brains to hold onto the good stuff and delete the bad or the unnecessary, or is there some point to our memory that I am missing? Could there be some lesson I have missed in the tale of the missing shoe? Giggle. I’ll have to ponder that one.
(Note: I just did a search for Crystal Barbie to see if I could find an image and there she was! Barbie’s doll from 1984. Bless.)
One of my vivid memories is getting a glow in the dark Barbie. Again, she was perfect, and new (and being the youngest of three girls, very few of my things were brand new and perfect!!). I remember so vividly going in our cold room because it had no windows after holding her dress up to our basement lamp to see the stars on her dress glow. I can remember it like yesterday, almost feel it, yet without this post I would have never thought of it. Thanks for the memory nudge. xoxo Happy Thanksgiving my pal. xoxo
I remember losing my Sindy’s shoe too. These things obviously affected us very deeply. I think I may be a bit older than you. My Sindy had bell bottom trousers…
Hi. I found you via Susannah’s blog. I think we remember things that make a deep impression on us as children because it’s the first time a particlar thing happened to us. Losing a doll’s shoe may seem insignigicant now, but at the time you learnt lots of lessons to do with the nature of the universe: that nothing stays the same forever, nothing is perfect, and that you can’t control what happens. That’s pretty big stuff, and sucking something up the vacuum cleaner triggered the memory of losing your doll’s shoe and all the feelings you experienced back then. I don’t think we can eradicate those bits of our memory, although scientists are working on creating amnesia drugs, to help people not develop PTSD after traumatic episodes. I doubt that losing a doll’s shoe would qualify as quite traumatic enough though. 🙂
what a lovely blog! 🙂