Thanks for the memories

Today

During the past few weeks, I have, for a range of reasons, some of them unpleasant & difficult, been examining my memories of the past, especially childhood. I discovered a number of things.

Firstly that memories have different qualities. Some are sensory - those where you can feel or hear or taste the memory. - the feel of a garment or the smell of someone's hair. They take you back to actually feeling whatever age you were at the time and are not usually linked to a specific event.

Some are of a quite specific one-off event - these you can recount like a story.

Others are of the "this used to happen" variety. With these you know that there were events that happened similarly a number of times, It's hard to say "this was on this date or that", only that there were a number of occasions.

Then there are those that you suspect are the memories of someone telling you about the event, rather than of your own experience.

Sometimes you have a very vivid memory, only to discover, when presented with the facts, that you were actually wrong. I don't know how these memories ever take root.

Finally, you find out that, where you have shared an event with others, their memory is often quite different from yours.

In My Day

Here are 4 memories of a single event during our childhood:

I and my siblings were playing hide-and-seek. Our great Victorian pile was ideal for this purpose. I was "it".

Chris remembers that he had a great idea for a place for Beatrice to hide - in the dressing up drawer in the great chest of drawers on the landing. He tucked her in and went off to hide himself. Mamma called us to lunch. During the meal Mamma suddenly says "Where's Beatrice?" Chris, horrified, thinking he's killed her, volunteers to find her. Which he does and finds she's all right if more than a little traumatised.

Beatrice remembers the first part, and being afraid that she'll suffocate in the drawer (which she can't get out of) and the trauma.

I remember being in the garden, searching and being called into lunch, thus abandoning the game. I also remember Mamma asking the question, but mainly that Beatrice arrived late to the meal with such a feeble excuse for her lateness and traumatised state (she clearly didn't drop Chris in it) that I despised her for it.

And David doesn't appear to remember it at all.

At least, that is my memory of the discussion we had about it a couple of years ago.

Which makes you realise why witness statement following incidents often don't agree with each other, although nobody's lying.