Earliest Memories

“What are your earliest memories?” the therapist asked.

I thought a moment, trying to separate out the real memories from the snapshot memories. As the oldest child, and with my father away in the army, my early childhood had been copiously documented.

“I have a vague memory of burning my arm on an electric heater, probably when I was three,” I replied.

“What do you remember about it? Do you remember the pain?” she queried.

“No, I don’t remember the pain. I can visualize the room, and I can see the heater, and I can remember the mark it left on my arm. Another early memory also involves getting hurt; I remember getting a splinter. When I was about three and a half, we lived in another state for a few months, and we had neighbors, unlike in our old home, where we lived out in the country. The neighbors next door had kids who were older than me, and I was in the yard playing. They had a tree in the back yard, and had put a 2x8 plank up into the tree, so you could walk up the plank to climb into the tree. I remember doing that, and getting a splinter in my left hand. I don’t remember the pain from that, either,” I recalled.

“Do you remember the other kids? How many were there? Were there any adults around?” she questioned.

“I know there were other kids and that they were older, but I don’t remember them at all. I don’t remember any adults there. I don’t know if my mom was out in the back yard or not. I don’t remember crying or going to her.”

“Any other early memories?”

“Another memory from that same few months in Texas is that I used to watch The Lone Ranger on television. I would come in from playing and turn on the TV. I can see our old television. I don’t really remember much about the room it was in, nor do I have a clear picture of the house we lived in then. I remember my bedroom, but that’s about it.”

“Did anybody watch TV with you?”

“No, my brother was only a year old; he was too young.”

“Do you notice anything those memories have in common?” the therapist prompted.

I contemplated the memories. Two had involved mild injury, which probably imprinted them on my brain, but not the third. Other than they had all occurred before I was four, I couldn’t see a common thread in all three of them. “Not really,” I answered. “Injury is the only thing that comes to mind, and the Lone Ranger memory doesn’t involve that.”

“What strikes me is that you’re alone in these memories. You don’t remember anybody else with any clarity. You know that there were other kids around in one of them, but you don’t remember the kids themselves. It suggests to me that you were probably pretty self-sufficient from a young age. Not necessarily lonely, but not needing other people a great deal.”

“Interesting. I see the same thing in my daughter, always have. She was the two year old telling me ‘Go away, Mommy, I’m busy!’ The child who is always happy to have a playdate, but seldom asks for them. She enjoys playing with other kids, but is pretty content to be alone. Lucky, since she’s an only child.”

“How did you feel when your two year old said ‘Go away, mommy!’”

“There was a moment of pain – she doesn’t need me! But that passed, and I was glad to have such an independent child. What’s harder is that when she’s so self-sufficient and self-contained, it’s hard to know what’s going on with her. There’s a wall there, and it’s been difficult for me not to want to batter it down sometimes. It doesn’t do any good; the more I push her to tell me what’s going on, the more she retreats.”

“Just like you did with your mother?”

“Yeah. My mother couldn’t let go, though. It was remembering the pain of my mother trying to batter down my wall that eventually made me stop doing it with my daughter. I could see myself locked in, I could tell I was doing to her what was done to me. I remember one time, I don’t even remember what I was trying to find out from her, but she was crying, I was frustrated, and I had tried every trick I had learned from my mother, to no avail, of course. I hated it; I hated that I had done those things, that I had tried to shame her into telling me, that I had gotten locked in and wouldn’t let go, that my sweet child was crying and I had caused it for no good reason, and I stopped. I just won’t go there anymore. I will not become my mother!”

“But can you feel some empathy, or at least sympathy, for your mother? Can you see how frustrating it was for her to have this self-contained child? How it might feel like rejection, make her feel inadequate?”

“Ouch. I don’t like feeling sympathy for my mother. I really don’t like feeling empathy for her. I don’t want to share anything with her.”

“Do you think she did the best she could with what she had?”

“Unfortunately, I do. It wasn’t what I wanted, not even what I needed, but it was all she had to offer.”

“So why do you keep blaming her for something she couldn’t do anything about?”

Ah, that is the question.