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It always amazes me what bad memories I provide for my kids May 27, 2009

We will be hanging around, cleaning, playing games, talking about last summer – and all of the sudden the kids will bring up some seemingly terrible thing I did that apparently has haunted them. Matthew doesn’t ride his bike anymore. Apparently it is because I did something to cause him to fall on his bike and it was traumatizing. In truth, he’s just not a bike kind of kid, I think. So many times, they’ll say, “Mom do you remember when you made us…” or “Mom, do you remember when you wouldn’t let us…”. Obviously they remember so isn’t that enough?

When I was in college, our professor had a theory that the earliest, most traumatizing event of our lives was the formative experience that defines our issues as adults. Now, when he was telling us about this theory, he didn’t make this statement. He, instead, worked with us to think really hard to come up with the VERY first memory of our lives. If we mentioned one memory, he would ask how old we were when we had that memory. Then, he would say “you were 4 then, don’t you remember something from when you were 3?” He prodded and prodded. When we finally thought we had come up with our very earliest memory, he had us write it down so we didn’t forget or change it as he went through the earliest memories of the various people in the class. As he helped us evaluate those memories, he would say things like “you probably have a lot of arguments with your mother” or “you must have a lot of power struggles with your father”. He would base this on his earliest memory theory.

Well, I’m certain my earliest memory threw him for a loop. As a very young girl, I really wanted to pee standing up. So, I tried taking a used toilet paper roll and tried to make a chute out of it so I could then pee standing up. As you can imagine, the pee drizzled down my legs to the floor and I was very traumatized that for the rest of my life I would have to sit down to pee.

The professor was, um, ah, completely aghast, dumbfounded. I don’t think he was ready to break out studies about Freud yet.

I wish the kids would also tell me about all the great memories they have. Is it just human nature to pass over the good stuff and hold on to the negative stuff? Hmmm. I guess when I become thankful for having to sit down when peeing, my kids wills start sharing all of their positive memories. I guess it’s all about being thankful.