Strolling Down My Memory Lame

I don’t often talk about it, but my birth was a traumatic experience.  The day began uneventfully; I slept late, as was my practice in those lazy months, with no plans other than the usual---a bit of thumb-sucking, some stretching, kicking, napping and skinny-dipping in what I thought was my own private pool.  (My friend Tommy Humphrey would interject here, “That’s pretty much your current schedule, isn’t it, Rusty?” To which I would respond, “Write your own stories, Pretty Boy.”)  That particular November day I was utterly content, and reflecting on my idyllic situation, when my world was quite suddenly turned upside down.  Thrust into a dark tunnel for no apparent reason, I was unceremoniously squeezed and shoved for what seemed like hours, from time to time hearing the cries of the mystery woman whose voice, over the previous months, had become so familiar to me. 
She seemed to be in some sort of distress. The next thing I knew I was being pulled, head first, out of the pool.  The light was so bright it hurt my eyes.  I remember some sort of lifeline around my waist which was cut when I was out of the water.  A man was holding me, clearing my mouth and slapping my back; and it all became clear to me in an instant, “He must be the lifeguard, and he thinks I’m drowning.”  Thankfully, I don’t recall that he gave me CPR.  

I noticed a few ladies bustling around in identical white outfits.  I didn’t know if they were pool attendants or members of a women’s swim team.  I tried to tell them I had been in no danger, and in fact, that I was comfortable in the water, and wanted to get back into the pool.   But none of them appeared to speak infant.  One wrapped me in a thin towel and dropped me in some sort of small container that I supposed was a clothes-locker for the swim club members.  I don’t remember exactly how long I was there; but the minutes turned into hours, and the hours into days.  It was a terrifying experience. My only pleasant moments in that place were when one of the ladies in white would take me to the woman with the familiar voice, who was no longer crying.  She would hold me and rock me and talk to me and give me milk from her own secret stash.  Eventually, she took me home with her, and I thought, “If I never see that swim club again, that will be soon enough.” 

To be honest, as you may have guessed, that account of my birth is a bit of an exaggeration.  The fact is, I don’t have any clear recollections of that day.  The truth is quite the opposite.  I don’t have any recollections of my first several years.  It's hard to stroll down Memory Lane with a memory that's lame.  It’s said that memories can be erased by traumatic events.  I must have been severely traumatized at the age of four or five, because everything before that is a blur.  The prime suspects are my older brothers.  They would have been just the right age to terrorize a younger sibling. 

My sister Dianna, who came along later, likes to tell anyone who will listen that when the film “Hush…Hush, Sweet Charlotte” was released in 1964, depicting (so we heard) a beheading, her older brothers pulled off the head of one of her dolls (Chatty Cathy or Barbie?) and tossed the remains into a closet where she had sought refuge from us.  She claims that we said, as we tossed the headless doll toward her quivering form in the closet,  “Hush hush, Sweet Dianna.”

As one of the alleged tormentors, I respond, “If that had really happened, it would have been sufficiently traumatic to wipe out all your childhood memories.  Since you recall it, you must have imagined it (and by the way, didn't you once spell your name with one n, or have I been spelling it wrong all these years?)"  That’s not to say there’s no sliver of truth there.  She did have dolls, and our home did have closets, but as for the rest?  By way of contrast, I have no recollection of being tortured by Ricky and Dougy, so whatever they did must have been really bad, erasing my hard drive, or soft drive, or to be more accurate, my abacus.  The fact that I have no memory of the trauma is the best evidence of it. Defendants with court-appointed counsel have received life sentences on flimsier grounds.

On the opposite side of the memory spectrum is my friend Glenn in Tennessee.  He told me that he has an early memory of being on his back, staring up at numerous lights while his mother walked around him raising her hands up and down.  (Yes, Pretty Boy, she could have been a witch doctor, trying to drive the measles out of him, but there’s a more logical explanation.  Why don’t you just keep your crazy theories to yourself?).  His mom told him that when he was an infant (about 9 months old, according to my admittedly defective memory) the family moved into a particular Pittsburgh house (No, PB, I don’t remember which one) and she put him on his back in a baby carrier on the dining room table, staring up at the chandelier, as she painted the room’s walls with a roller.  I suppose if she knew how advanced he was she’d have given him a copy of the Post-Gazette to peruse.  Instead he stared at a chandelier all day.  At least he got to exercise his peripheral vision.  [Glenn, if you happen to read this, maybe you can leave a comment so people know there’s some thread of truth here.]   

I don’t know what I was doing while future engineers were busy making memories at the age of 3/4.   I suspect my brain hadn’t congealed yet, sort of like gelatin before chilling.  Evidently, my parents didn’t leave me in the fridge long enough. This distinguishes me from Pretty Boy, who, was clearly left in the fridge too long.  (Now don’t get on your high horse, Humphrey.  You started it with that crack about my schedule in paragraph one). Or maybe my mother left me under the table when she painted the dining room so I couldn’t see anything but the table’s underside, which would hardly be memorable.  (What’s that?----Pretty Boy says that Mom obviously let me drink the paint).

The first memory I have to which I can affix a date is sitting on the steps of our Baltimore home when I heard that Dwight Eisenhower had been reelected president.  This would have been November of 1956, or according to my parents, just before my sixth birthday.  In other words, in memory development, I was over 5 years behind my friend Glenn.  By the time he turned six he probably had the names of all the presidents memorized in order, while my mind was just beginning to flicker on.  The only reasonable explanation is my parents made a mistake about the date of my birth.  Their recollection is that I was born in 1950, but I suspect it was 1955.  Such errors are not unprecedented in our family.  For years my brother Kenny had us celebrating his birthday on May 3, until someone noticed that his Birth Certificate said May 4.  I suspect that at this age he’s trying to move his birthday in the other direction.

It’s a funny thing about memories, they’re not always reliable.  If we don’t reflect on things we know, we can lose them.  I’m sure there was a time when I knew the names of all my first grade classmates. (Yes, Pretty Boy, my parents assured me that I went to first grade).  Now I can’t even name our teacher, and I’m almost certain we had a teacher. 

The Lord knows we tend to forget things.  Dozens of times in Scripture, God’s people are exhorted to remember, and often, what they are called to remember is their redemption,

“And Moses said to the people: ‘Remember this day in which you went out of Egypt, out of the house of bondage, for by strength of hand the LORD brought you out of this place.” [Exodus 13:3]

“…you shall remember well what the LORD your God did to Pharaoh and to all Egypt: the great trials which your eyes saw, the signs and the wonders, the mighty hand and the outstretched arm, by which the LORD your God brought you out…” [Deuteronomy 7:18-19]

“You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the Lord your God redeemed you…” [Deuteronomy 15:15]

It was during the Passover Meal, set aside to help God’s people remember their redemption from slavery, that the Lord Jesus gave His disciples another “object lesson.” It was to commemorate something even more wonderful than deliverance from bondage to Pharaoh.  The Lord’s Supper was given to commemorate deliverance from bondage to sin.  One wouldn’t think that the sinner who has been forgiven, who has been redeemed, who has been justified, brought from darkness to light, and from spiritual death to life, would need a continual reminder of it.  One might ask how in the world he could forget it.  The answer is found in the question.  In the world he could forget it.  The pleasures and pursuits of this world, as well as his innate natural pride, could draw his focus anywhere but to Christ, so Jesus said, “Do this in remembrance of me.”   Let the bread, which is formed from grain, crushed and baked, remind you of my body crushed under the weight of man’s sin, enduring the oven of God’s holy wrath.  Let the wine remind you of my blood, shed for sinners, for “…without shedding of blood there is no remission.” [Hebrews 9:22]  

For the believer, the world and its attractions may pull your thoughts away from what is most important, but when you come to the Lord’s Table, you will remember. 

All I need now is a way to remember everything else.