My Mickey Mouse record player and collection of read-a-long Golden books on record, a road trip to the Grand Canyon, watching old movies in my pajamas with my mom and sister, sock fights and the terror I felt whenever the heater shuddered to life when it turned on at night are just a few of my vivid memories of childhood.
As our son finishes elementary school and heads toward middle school, it’s bringing back a lot of memories (both fun and awkward) of that transitionary time between childhood and the teenage years. Ever noticed how a memory can be so vivid in your mind, but for someone else the same event is remembered differently or maybe didn’t even register in their minds? It got me to thinking about what we remember from childhood and why.
My parents got divorced when I was in third grade. It was a pretty traumatic upheaval as is usually the case when a family breaks apart. I remember feeling the need to conceal it from my friends because I didn’t know anyone else who had gone through a divorce. And as kids most often do, I was worried that there was something I had done to cause it. But as time passed, things normalized and I noticed a feeling of lightness in the household. The absence of an unnamed tension that had always existed, but I had never known was there until it was gone. Like most kids I was remarkably adaptable. Once a visitation schedule had been outlined, it became my new normal to see our father every other weekend and for four hours a week on Wednesday nights. But the subconscious trauma still affects me slightly today as anyone who has ever traveled with me knows – I hate packing. Forced to bring everything I needed for visits to my dad’s house or go without until I returned home, packing became a huge source of tension for me. I either brought too much or too little and I always forgetting something important like my favorite stuffed animal, my toothbrush or the book I was reading. It’s odd how one of the biggest take-away from my parent’s divorce is a lifetime of packing-anxiety.
Writing my YA series The Rise And Fall Of Dani Truehart, I worked hard to remember the intense and mercurial emotions one goes through growing up. Something so small as a raspberry pushup on a hot summer day (is it weird an entire generation ate ice cream from a decorated toilet paper tube?) or getting eyeglasses in the fifth grade was enough to hurl a me into waves of joy or despair when I was young. The memories of those heightened emotions are powerful even now, and they allowed me to recall the raw, all-encompassing physical and emotional reactions experienced by my much younger self. Memories that have a physical response attached to the emotions are the ones that are the most enduring for me.
I think it’s why certain events felt so monumental and stick with me well into adulthood. My tongue feeling too big for my mouth and my sweaty palms when I raised my hand to speak in class. Or tugging at my clothes as my mom drove me to a party, worried that I was too dressed up or not dressed up enough or the simultaneous comfort and discomfort I felt playing with toys when some of the other kids in my class were starting to “go” together were all dire situations that stuck with me because I can trace the emotions to a physical reaction. The world of a child is much smaller than an adult’s  –  family, friends, a hometown. So It’s only as an adult with a decades of experience that made me realize that not one of those issues is scary or even important. I wish my younger self could have had just a bit more confidence, so I could have relaxed and enjoyed being a kid just a little bit more. And it gives me a path to follow regarding how to talk to our son when he’s upset or feeling awkward about something that seems small to me as an adult.
Remembering the way my stomach dropped when the chain caught when I’d swung just a bit too high on the swing set, the exhilaration of speeding down an empty street pedaling as fast as I could or the squirming of a million worms in my stomach as I dreaded telling my mom that I’d failed a math test all stand out for me because I can tie a physical reaction to the emotions I was feeling. This helps me as a writer because I want my readers to get caught up in my story. I don’t want to just describe in words what is happening. I want my readers to feel it, smell it, hear it.
I challenge you to think of a memory from your childhood – is it just a picture you see? Or can you feel the breeze in your hair, are your ears ringing or is your stomach filled with butterflies? A picture tells a thousand words but emotions paired with a physical reaction brings us a different kind of memory, allowing us to sip back in that moment for an instant and fully experience what it was like to be a child.
Happy Tuesday 🏖