Week of lists on remembering day 5: a list of memories of memories:
1) I remember a day when I was about eight years old being struck by an awe-inspiring vivid memory from my infancy: it was flannel. The whole memory was just the feel and close-up look of flannel. But it came to me with the very distinct attendant feeling that it was a memory from when I was a baby. I was very excited about this. Even at the time I questioned its authenticity and now of course I must question it even more, because I don't have the memory anymore; all I can do is remember remembering it. I'd be really curious to know if other people have similar memories (or pseudo-memories).
2) When I was four my parents emptied their RRSPs and boarded a plane with their 12-year-old, eight-year-old and soon-to-be-five-year-old kids to drive around Europe in a rented car for three months. There are lots of pictures of this trip and lots of stories got told about it for years after. Also, when we came back we made some of the pictures into a collage that was then framed and still hangs in my parents' dining room (maybe if I become clever I will find a way of appending a picture of the collage to this post). Anyhow, I remember a lot of things that happened on this trip, but I believe that most of those things I remember I actually don't remember at all, I just have heard the stories and seen the pictures of me there and my brain has put it all together into a form that is indistinguishable from real memory.
3) There are also some memories from that Europe trip that are a bit like a mix of the first and second: I am sure I remembered them at some point, and now I think I remember remembering and also know the stories from my parents, and have seen the pictures. For instance, I remember that when I turned five in Delphi, we went into a little restaurant and they ordered me a tiny chocolate cake that had one candle in it, and the people at the table next to us sang along to happy birthday. I thought this was awesome. What I mostly remember now is how later, as a kid, I remembered how awesome it was that the people sitting next to us sang along. As an aside, funny how a five-year-old thinks it's so cool when there's other anglo tourists who happen to be right there at the table next to us by good fortune of having chosen the same restaurant in all of Delphi. That five year old has something over the later version of the Western tourist (though I try to fight the snobbery, I'd still be way happier if my chosen restaurant had only Greek speakers in it now).
4) It has happened to me at least once that I have 'remembered' being somewhere when someone tells a familiar story, to be told that I wasn't actually there. My mother does this all the time. It's a slightly worrying view into my future.
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