Every so often, while in the company of Emilia, I find myself thinking, “Someday, she’s going to look back on this moment and laugh, or smile, or stare wistfully out the window of her space mansion and remember Saturday mornings spent listening to Car Talk and picking dried cheese off the kitchen floor.”
But
the truth is, she probably won’t.
Not
because she doesn’t want to, but because her brain is still developing and only
just beginning to grasp the short-term.
The
window of time before age one is, as far as a baby’s long-term memory goes, a
wash (a very awesome wash filled with milestones and my own wonderful memories,
but still…). As I come to terms with the fact that these shared recollections
are actually pretty one-sided, I’ve been reflecting on what my brain has held
onto from the early days of my own childhood.
This,
in what may or may not be chronological order, is what I remember:
1. Eating deodorant. It
tasted like a cross between a dying houseplant and fondant.
2. Finding myself facedown in
the Ozarks’ cold, murky waters. I
don’t know what the story is here. I’ve never asked, but I’m sure the reality
was way less dramatic than the memory.
3.
Shoving a dime into an electrical
outlet. I was pretending it was a gumball machine. There were sparks. So
many sparks.
4. Bits and pieces of a few Pinwheel
episodes.
These
blurred memories have two things in common: 1) they all stem from negative
and/or traumatic events (Pinwheel aside – that has more to do with a lifelong
love of television), and 2) they all conclude with a harrowing rescue and the comforting
reassurance of my mother.
The
memory of eating deodorant is immediately followed by the memory of my mom running
in, gently removing the toxic snack from my hand, hugging me, and probably
making a frantic call to poison control. She scooped me out of the water. She
pulled me away from the sparking outlet. She spoke soothingly. She sat and
watched Nickelodeon with me every morning.
I
guess what I’m trying to say is that maybe, hopefully, if my own recollection
is any indication of a very young child’s psyche, when Emilia thinks back on
those first hazy memories, I’ll make an appearance or two. It’s a reminder to
make every moment as pleasant as possible. To be an unwavering source of
comfort. And to teach her that, despite looking so tempting, deodorant is
actually not delicious. At all.
