Childhood Never Began
They say that as you get
older, the memories of the past get clearer than the present and you
tend to live in them. A friend on Facebook buried her mother today
and was saying how much she would miss her. She doesn't know how
lucky she is. She will miss her.
I decided to lay back see
what I remembered of the two people who raised me or at least kept me
fed and clothed most of the time. I found I had two memories I could
actually recount and only two. Oh, I remember countries and places
you will probably never have the opportunity to see and people you
will only know from history books that haven't been rewritten,
bending down and shaking my small hand. Oh, and I remember the pity
in their eyes I didn't understand then because all children believe
their parents....
Perhaps that pity is best
explained in the one encounter I remember with my aunt's husband who
was Native America, or just Indian back then. He brought me some
antique doll furniture to play with as my only toys were an old rag
doll and some cheap Indian dolls they sold in gas stations in the
Southwest for the tourists to take home and thrown away. I remember
him telling me to take good care of the little chairs and table as
they were very old and my mother saying I would never break anything
I was given, I knew better. The thing she gave birth to knew better
than to make noise, break anything or do anything she wasn't told to
do.
My two memories of my
parents are pretty dismal so you might want to stop reading.
When I was around 1 and a
half, I had an old bottle with a very old nipple. Back then the
nipples on baby bottles were made of rubber and they tasted like an
old tire and smelled like one, too. This one was so old that the
taste and odor had long leeched out of it. It was was stained and had
a hole in the end making it more a straw than a nipple but it kept me
from spilling anything which was against the rules and would be
punished. I loved it and my mother hated it. She wanted a new and
pretty nipple on the bottle. I remember laying in my crib in the
other room and seeing her (I could astral project very well) taking
the old nipple and a pair of old black kitchen scissors and cutting
it into tiny little pieces. First she cut them sideways and then she
took the little circles and cut them into two pieces and then four. I
was screaming and then she brought me the new bottle with the new
nipple. I threw it and it hit the ceiling corner diagonally opposite
my crib shattering it into more pieces than she had cut the nipple
into and covering all my crib in milk and glass. Baby bottles were
made of glass back then. It took a while for the nanny they hired to
get me to drink or eat anything.
My memory of my father is
from around 6 when I was trying to hug him and he was “accidentally”
burning me with his cigarette to get me to go away.
And thus my memories are of
people and places I will never see again. I seldom if ever think of
my parents unless it is in reference to an event or place we went.
They are dead and as useless as a used tissue already thrown out in
the garbage. Perhaps the tissue is more useful, it can be mulched.
So my friends, you might
want to consider what your children are going to remember of you.
There is a big difference of
being proud of someone as they always were of me and taking pride in
someone's accomplishments. One is just jealousy in sheep's clothing
and the other is love of the person.
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