It’s very difficult to recall a past event accurately. It’s even harder with someone who was with us in that time and place. For one thing, there is selective amnesia. As in the case of the ninety-year old man who leaned over and gave his wife a kiss. She looked up and said, “What was that other thing we used to do?” And beyond that, there is selective perception. Think travel tour when pictures are shared at a reunion. One fellow traveler has 200 shots of plants and flowers. Another has only architecture. A third has all birds.
An educational theorist describes story comprehension of children of poverty as non-linear. Instead of following and then repeating a story arc, impoverished children tend to absorb random instances of pain, joy, dismay and anger. So, the Cinderella story is about a beautiful dress and cleaning the floor and a prince and a mean sister and glass shoes. No order. Perhaps we do something similar looking back on the pages of our life story. The intense moments stand out, if only for us.
Some folks, as they age, forgets everything but their grudges. Like chunks of meat in a stew, after a time, bitterness can be so marinated with all the other ingredients that it’s hard to isolate the original beef floating in the gumbo of time and place. One of us is cosseting the peas of insult and pain while the other chews on the carrots. So little of our life-recall overlaps in the Venn diagram of our togetherness.
Grandmothers, sometimes, would soft focus in the middle of a reminiscence and remark, “That was when I was pregnant with…” And I could tell they were watching a home movie, behind their eyes. It seems we all have walk-on roles in someone else’s movie. Which makes it so difficult to reconstruct the past, to salve hurts, to make up for pain when editing scenes from our shared existence.
Just ask VFW members as they try to tell their respective stories of a particular battle. Even if they were part of the seven soldiers raising the flag at Iwo Jima, the personal experience of each would be unique. And talking of World War II veterans, my father-in-law refused to recount war stories. “If you were there, you would know what it was like. If you weren’t, I can’t recreate it for you.” There’s a certain honesty in all that. A realization that a moment in time, for each individual is beyond reincarnation.
Retired trainer, and writing instructor, Joe Novara lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Writings include novels, short stories, a memoir and various poems, plays, anthologies and articles. Read more at https://freefloatingstories.wordpress.com/
