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Fragments From the Memory Log, Entry Five

There are key moments from my youth that stick out like lightning bugs in the summer darkness of an open field. Some are turning points in my life, great and small, while others appear to be blinking bright only by happenstance. For all these encephalic frames of time, my brain is an efficient neural Web search engine displaying the most important and relevant clickthroughs to each memory at the top of the recall list, all quite unlike the murky quagmire of poor results and invalid links it typically generates.

Some of these collectible recollections are from quite early on. I’ve mentioned to my family how I can see myself at some point continually crying and crying (and crying), really getting into it for a lengthy period, barely stopping for breath through it all. Now good old Mom says the only time she knows of that describes something like this is, when I was nearly six months of age, we had taken a trip by plane to see her family, and I bawled nearly the entire two hours it took. Wonderfully fascinating to know I was that child everyone despises having along on an inland flight. And I couldn’t shake away if I wanted to a picture of this meandering chasm of a crack in a plaster wall of the bedroom my brother and I shared before I reached the age of three. Why would I remember with clarity a mere crack in a wall? Why not.

Fortunately most remembrances are a bit further along in the birth to death timeline and provide stronger points of reference. I can fully picture the moment when on my own, I learned how to tie a bow, as one does with shoelaces. The whole scene still stands out clear: It’s night and I’m on a dirt mound in our backyard in early spring, the bright beam of the porch light signaling out over the new grass. There’s a group of fellow kids around me playing kickball (or one of a number of neighborhood variations). I’m acting goalie for my team, but as is typical for our versions of the game, there’s a long period where I have no real involvement. So I begin lazily tugging the pull strings to the hood on my jacket, and before I realize what I’m doing, I’ve tied them! I know this has to be a mistake, so I untie and try again… and it works! So I tie my shoes! And I grab a friend (nearly ripping his feet from him) and tie his shoes! Then I go in the house and tie my dad’s shoes! Few moments in my life have equaled the level of joy I felt then. Even sex has trouble reaching that height, though I give it every opportunity.

And there are instances which, though they appear critical enough to leave hard afterimages on my memory’s retina, aren’t appropriate for storage under anything but the Strange/Misc. file. One that’s long intrigued me, and shows a little of what lengths memory will go to remain way to the side of normality, is this: I’m standing near an alley, not too far from where I picked up the skill of tying, and watch for thirty seconds as rain comes down in sheets, but on the other side and half-way across the gravel of the back street. It literally fails to move beyond the exact middle of that alley for a full half-a-minute, and then one second later the rain is all around and drenching me.

I was in awe of that image as it happened. I still am. And it will stay up in my head somewhere, next to the laces and the cracks and the crying, and all the other little firefly moments, all mixed up together yet easily navigable. Seems to be a lot of room up there.