Memories and how they fade
I’ve never been great at keeping a journal. Never owned (or even held) a video camera. I don’t take enough photographs and I certainly don’t organize the ones I have into lovingly labeled albums. Part of this is that I find the gap between living life and recording it uncomfortable. The recorder of the moment is apart, almost excluded from the moment. The photographer is replaced by the viewer when the photos are printed. They are both outside the frame, watching it. I want to be included, to be living it.
I tell myself (and others) that memory is a more effective storage system than diaries or pixels, that somewhere in me are all the millions of moments of my life, all the ages I have ever been, all the faces my children have worn. These memories might not be immediately retrievable, but they are there nonetheless, woven into what makes me who I now am. Although I believe this, it’s a little disingenuous. I do forget. Of course I do. Remembering would take up too much brain energy in a mind that is already overtaxed.
Still, there are moments, days when I know that I want to remember, actively, vividly remember. I chant to myself, do not forget this, I promise not to forget this. Of course, I don’t remember how many of those days I have in fact forgotten. I remember that Daniel used to call Gussie, Guggy. I remember that Helena pronounces lemonade as if it had two m’s. I remember how she looked when we cut all her hair off last summer. I remember Daniel wearing his first bicycle helmet and nothing else. These memories will now stay with me because I have recorded them — by recording them, I have made two memories — the actual event and the act of remembering the event.
Of course, another part of this is that preservable moments are elusive. They fly past so quickly that you hardly have time to notice them, never mind find the camera, turn it on, fiddle hurl each other off the cliff. When they invent a nanochip camera that can be embedded in my eyeball so that all I have to do is blink hard (like Jeannie from I Dream of Jeannie) to take a photograph that accurately reflects what I see, I’ll be an early adopter.
Might be one of the reasons I like writing this. I’m catching memories as they fly past and pinning them here.
Hi Stuntmother!
When I read my journals, which I wrote faithfully and in great detail, I am amazed by how much is forgotten. So I treasure even more the words written and photos taken. They are storybooks to enjoy again someday.
I really enjoyed reading that. I have the worst memory ever. Embarrasingly so. I have never been able to participate in those “Remember when…” conversations, because I never do “remember when” I always uncomfortably smile and say things like, “when was that again?” I too have tried the blinking of the eye and a conscious “REMEMBER THIS” but it seldom works for me. I have a “mother journal” that I only write down funny things the kids say. That helps me remember.
Stunts, darling, I know exactly how you feel. My paternal grandmother had to take Polaroids of every single farking thing that happened in her presence, and it turned me off to candid photography forever. I hate pictures being taken on Thanksgiving and Christmas and family holidays, but I hate even worse worrying about the picture and whether the right moment is being captured and how everyone looks and is the light right and how much film is in the camera and was it good and does someone else take better pictures and should the flash be on and oh I wish I were in the picture instead of taking it and and and.
Starting in 1995, I decided that I would just sketch things. So on my vacation to Rome and Florence, I took a pad and pencil and sketched my impressions of the things that I saw. When I went to New Mexico in 1996, I took the same pad. Drawing really makes you see things and also renders a more accurate, personal accounts of what you’re seeing. Years later, when you look at your sketches, they reveal to you much more than a picture ever could. I recommend!
You’re ok. I never got prints made of my wedding photos. Never even looked at the videos that friends sent me that they made. I like the way I remember it happened. I don’t want to find out what really happened and have it ruined for me.