Once I had a couple of friends who could seemingly remember every detail of their childhood: toys they had… every relative… teachers… classmates… even what they wrote in kindergarten.
Me? Nothing.
Oh, there are a few scraps here and there… but nothing to make a story.
One memory does poke out every once in a while. It’s more of a photo than a real memory… you know one with dialogue and people attached to it.
No, this one is only a snapshot memory.
In it I see my mother waving at us as we drive away… me in the backseat, looking out the rear window. She was standing on a balcony, a screened-in porch, waving goodbye.
Today I know that my mom was a nurse. That she somehow contacted Tuberculosis (TB) and was confined to the Springfield Lake Sanitarium, near Akron, OH, when I was a little boy. I don’t know for how long.
I do know that attached to that snapshot is a feeling of sadness and loss. Fear, actually… that I’ll never see her again.
Like other repressed memories, perhaps one day, I’ll remember more.
But, today, my mind will only let me recall that young woman, waving as we drove from the grounds.
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