1.
My kids often seem to remember things wrong. I understand how it happens, I'm almost certainly guilty of it myself. After all, our memories are a story we tell ourselves, and why wouldn't we make that story as close to what we want to hear as we can make it? With repeated telling, the details are bound to get nudged a bit in our favor.
Besides that, it's all complicated by the fact that everyone is entitled to his or her own reality. So the way I saw it looking out my bedroom window may be completely different from the view you had on the swing set in the backyard. Family stories in particular are subject to a host of variables. Our age, experience, place in the pecking order, and whether or not we were up all night at a slumber party the night before can all influence the way we perceive events, and how we file them away for future reference.
We only get to live our own experiences, at which we arrive lugging individual suitcases. We pack up the souvenirs we're handed whether we want them or not, and then on we go.
The only thing I don't like about this tendency to mis-remember is that it's a stinging indictment against my own childhood memories. If everything didn't happen the way I remember it, is my whole life built on a story I've told myself rather than on actual events? And if it is, why didn't I tell it better?
All of this makes me think I need to worry less about the memoir I'd like to write. First of all, there's no such thing as a true memoir. I always think it's funny when it comes out that someone has lied in their memoir. The minute we set out to tell a story, we're running it through a filter of some kind. "Just the facts, ma'am," is an impossible request to make of anyone.
In my family, storytelling was valued, and I figured that out as a youngster. There was nothing more rewarding than getting a good laugh from the crowd at the Sunday dinner table. I think I brought up my children the same way. Not that I set out to raise liars, but the habit of embellishing was probably picked up if only as a result of spending 9 months hearing my voice continually while in the womb.
We enjoy laughing together, giving each other a little grief where it's warranted, laying out our bits of shared history and rearranging them again and again. Our stories are our most valuable family possessions, the common pieces to which we all lay claim, whether they happened to us or whether we own them only because of the number of times we've heard them served up with dessert.
I'd love to tell you about my day, but you can know it won't be until I've picked over it a bit, sorted out the best moments and polished them up a little. It's not something I do consciously, or with the intent to deceive. It's just that part of being me is telling my story. (You'll have to come up with your own.)
And if you don't agree it happened the way I tell it today, wait until tomorrow. I'm sure I'll have come up with something better by the next time you hear it.