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General => The Common Room => The Lighter Side => Topic started by: Mart 'n' Al on Thursday 13 February 20 12:22 GMT (UK)
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I am trying to document my memories from before the age of seven and a half, which was a convenient cut-off date in my childhood as my parents moved house at the time.
It has made me realise that it is difficult to separate what you've seen in photographs, and what your parents and other relatives might have discussed in front of you, from your own individual memories. For example, do I really remember my tricycle, or is it just that I've seen it in a photograph?
I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of others.
Martin
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I think my “early memories” are mainly the result of photographs and things I have been told.
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One of my earliest memories is of riding a tricycle - the sort with pedals attached directly to the front wheel. There's no photo of it as far as I know.
However I also remember the forbidding upslope in the driveway as you went towards the road. Today I can't see any slope at all, and the road has, if anything, been raised by a couple of layers of new surface.
My memories of the wallpaper in the front bedroom do tally with those of my parents. We moved out of that house just after I turned 4.
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A very difficult question to answer. When I did Psychology A Level we did cover "Learning and Memory" and more than one study suggested that a child is not capable of autobiographical memories until the age of around two. I argued strongly against this theory as I can clearly remember being in a room by myself in a cot with very high bars, and there was a flowered curtain to the side and all the walls were plain green. (I obviously made sense of my visual memory when I was old enough to make sense of the world around me). People came and went and their faces were covered with only their eyes showing. When I asked my Mother where this could have been she looked shocked and told me that was when I was in hospital on an isolation ward with suspected Diphtheria, she said that I was 17 months old at the time, and was later found to have "Plural Pneumonia" This had never been discussed as my Mother lost a baby girl who died of Pneumonia age 7 months before I was born.
I believe many of the memories we have from our childhood are inaccurate as we may remember a little piece of an event but the brain compensates by filling in the gaps for us to make sense of it thereby creating a false memory. On occasions we hear of an event from the past, imagine the scene and come to believe that we were there. My sister insisted that she remembered being with me when my Mother was running through a storm with me in a "Tan-Sad" both of us getting soaking wet and her face looked full of fear as she was terrified of thunder and lightning, but I have told my Sister this story many times when recalling our childhood memories, she has heard it so many times that she now believes that she was there and witnessed it. I know she would have been at school as she was 3 years older than me and I was about two years old, she doesn't appear in my mental image of that day that has stayed with me.
Carol
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I have many memories from before the age of seven for which there is no photographic evidence and which, as far as I know, have never been reconstructed for me by my parents. To mention just one, I recall very distinctly when my dad showed me wintergreen when I was about five. And I recall that he also sang a few lines from 'Wintergreen for President' at the time. If the little dirt lane in Harwich, Massachusetts is still there, I could probably get to within 50 yards of the very spot.
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... she said that I was 17 months old at the time, and was later found to have "Plural Pneumonia"
By now you will have realised that your pneumonia was pleural, not plural :D .
I think we must regard personal memories, and our recollections of family folklore, not with suspicion but with a very open mind. Some memories may be intense but our interpretations of them can mutate over the years. The facts behind a couple of family tales I heard from my parents may have been explained by reports I have discovered on the web.
My granny's father died of typhoid in his thirties in Anglesey, and that was somehow connected with the Penmon lifeboat. In fact he had been rescued from the rising tide while fishing several months before he died. And my teenage grandfather had 'run away to sea' in Ireland after an incident involving a horse. It seems that his father had been trying to recover payment for 'the services of an entire horse' at about that time, and I can't easily imagine a connection between those events.
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Andrew...I was aware, predictive text has mind of it's own....well spotted.
I couldn't agree with you more. Research has taught me that stories passed down from elderly relatives are at odds with what I have learned to be the real story.
Carol
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There is a theory that when an event happens we remember it. When we recall that memory, we remember that remembrance and not the original memory. The original memory having been "over written" by our later later recall of that memory.
It supposedly explains why some memories fade or become incomplete.
My own earliest memory is seeing a band of brilliant white, a band of reddy brown above that and bright green above that. What it meant I did not know, until I mentioned to my mother when I was about 50. She said it was the view from my nursery window. A wide gloss white window sill, the terracotta roof tiles of nearby houses and the greenery of the trees in the Bombay zoo. We left India before my second birthday.
Regards
Chas
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I remember getting my tricycle. There's a photo of it, but what I remember is that I couldn't turn the pedals.
I remember a bit of my first day in school. The teacher asked me if I'd like to do a jigsaw. I chose a really hard one and she wanted me to do an easier one, but I insisted because I liked the picture. I remember getting about 8 pieces stuck together.
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I remember being bathed in the butler sink underneath the Ascot gas boiler - not the most reliable thing to get started!
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I remember being bathed in the butler sink underneath the Ascot gas boiler - not the most reliable thing to get started!
I also remember being bathed in the sink in what my mother used to refer to as 'an upper and downer'. Sit on the draining board, with your feet in the water in the sink for the face part and then stand up (and you needed to be small) for the rest ;)
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I can't think that my generation had many photographs to corrupt our memories; photographs were few and far between in my childhood, and generally reserved for special occasions such as a caravan holiday in Whitby or a beach-hut weekend at Felixstowe.
So my memories are pristine, unsullied, and I can date them all relatively easily since my father was in the RAF and we moved at regular intervals. Thus I can clearly remember going to a shop, my father buying me sherbert, and then coming back and playing with it before the fire, with an egg-cup and a bowl. I was about two at the time. Fast-forward less than a year, and I was in Norfolk, standing admiring the shiny red wheels of a new friend's scooter. A basket of broken eggs, when I lived in Yorkshire - aged 6 - and was sent to the NAAFI with a list, and got distracted when I met friends on the way home... All of these memories still jewel-bright. My memories, not caught by camera, not shared with others. Just mine and not corrupted.
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All of these memories still jewel-bright. My memories, not caught by camera, not shared with others. Just mine and not corrupted.
I think this is the tricky point we are discussing. Some of us are convinced that we are remembering things exactly as they were 'recorded'. Others believe that the brain does not work quite like that, but each time a memory is recalled, some features get emphasised while others may fade out. A computer's hard-drive is quite a good model for a human memory, and I'm not sure I would trust one of those to remain uncorrupted for several decades .... :(
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Temporal "bookmarks" are useful, helping date, identify and validate memories, as Greensleeves says.
Martin
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Like and earlier poster, a "Tan-Sad" pram helped me to fix an early memory. I mentioned to my mother that I remembered her pushing me along a dark road, very wet, I could see her facing me over the dark blue ( lined cream) "canopy thing that covered where I was and also was fastened more vertically to help keep off the weather. Her coat was soaked, a "Teddy bear" fabric, normally beige, but looking dark, and rain was running down her face and hair.
Because I described the Tan Sad she had at the time, she knew it was before I was a couple of months over 2, as she let a relative who didn't live anywhere near us, have it at the end of the Year, for her first child, as she also had a more stately grey Silver Cross pram (posher!) . She also knew when she had soaked that coat through, apparently it was a late evening downpour as she brought me home along the main road, before she turned off towards the lane.
The funny thing is I'd so little memory of the Silver Cross, only of being in it in the garden once, and a sheep frightening me, and said so. Mum replied that she wasn't surprised, it was so heavy to push up a steep uneven hill that she gave up to it, and they put it in the barn!
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seperation anxiety or wot!! I do not know.... but I was bathed in the bloomin sink under the kitchen window until I was ELEVEN and protested extremely loudly...
Mother of mine... !!!! memories are changing daily about our relationship and not all for the good.
Finley
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Two things I remember quite vividly. My father used to use the cinders from the fire to make a path in the garden. When I was about 3/4 I fell over on the path and can remember clear as day being sat on the kitchen table while my mother bathed and cleaned up my face. Nearly 70 years later I still have a tiny black speck above my top lip as a permanent reminder.
The second incident was when I was aged 5. I received a red tricycle with white mudguards and a white metal basket on the front. My best friend had received the self same tricycle which was blue. When we were out together with our Mum's one day, as children still do, she and I swapped bikes. When we came to a steep hill we were both told to stop - she did, I didn't. I can still remember the panic as I hurtled down the hill unable to stop. Reason being, I'm left handed and my own tricycle duly had a left hand brake, but my friend's had a right hand brake. I don't remember anything except hurtling down the hill but learnt later that a man near the bottom of the hill heard my Mum screaming and looked up to see me hurtling down. He was working in his front garden and managed to leap out and stop me from heading onto the main built up road at the bottom of the hill. If he hadn't managed to stop me I might not even be here now to tell the tale.
Annette
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I do have some very early memories, of before I was three - some were talked about and 'reinforced' over the years, but others I have never spoken of.
For example, I remember sitting in my High Chair, next to my Dad, at the table, and a specific Aunty was there.
I clearly see the table with faces all around (I come from a large family).
Yet this memory confused me as I was growing up, as my High Chair was always next to my mother, and the Aunty was never there.
I assumed I must have just got mixed. Now I realise that this must have been a special occassion, and my High Chair was next to my Father, simply because my mother's sister was sitting next to my mother.
(With hindsight, I assume a fuss was made of me, etc, but I dont remember that. I just remember having the knowledge of an Aunt being there)
I never spoke of this because I assumed I must have got mixed up. I remember thinking about it occassionally and being very confused. But I can still see the picture in my mind of the table, etc
I have a few other memories of before I was 3. A holiday we took when I was 2.
Since my mother's death, I have found some photos taken in the garden, she has written on the back that I am nearly 3. But I actually remember this occassion. (But some will say I only rememer because of the photos)
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We'll never really be able to disentangle memory from photos.
I was able to, to a certain extent, in some cases, because all our family photos of that time were in black and white, and I apparently even then had an excellent colour memory, and described accurately the colours involved even when I had no later evidence available - for example, the colour of the benches in a garden that I only ever visited before I was 2. (The woodwork of the window frames etc, was different, and the bench colour must've made such an impression on me because of that).