Sunday Scribblings: Time Machine

Sometimes I just want to go back, to see if I can find some of the colors and smells and friends that I know were part of my life. I remember very little about my childhood, especially before about age eight.

Most of my memories I know I've created from the photos my mom keeps in a shoebox. I falsely remember my pony Shorty, my red snowsuit with rainbow piping, the summer heat while fishing for trout at Shady Lakes, the trip to Amsterdam where I wore a dress with a numbers print and stared out the window of a ferryboat.

The things I do legitimately remember are scarce and quite blurred.

I remember picking blossoms off the geraniums my mom used to grow in whisky barrels in the sunroom. I would make bouquets of white, red and magenta flowers. For my mom to have been in that house, it was before I was six.

I have random flashes from the summers spent at my grandmother's house in Italy. I remember eating calamari out of a brown paper sack at the beach, the long driveway up to her house flanked by walnut trees, the musty smell of her attic full of African masks.

I recall making mud pies with my neighbor Janelle, and picking apples from the orchard behind the house where I first lived. I remember our ugly old dog, Dolly, who had curly grayish fur and short legs. We had four other dogs, including one who adored me and supposedly would wait at the gate for me to come home, but sadly I don't recall Lobo other than from photos.

I remember one day at school a girl called Brooke got a massive bloody nose as we sat cross-legged in a circle on colored carpet mats. I must have been eight or nine.

I also remember that as part of a class assignment that same year, we had to do a show-and-tell presentation. I brought in a plant that had striped light and dark green leaves and occasionally would produce clusters of red and yellow berries. I don't remember its scientific name, but my memory of this plant is clear enough I'm sure I could find it if I took enough time on Google.

I have flashes of other things: my bookshelf full of toys and books, the white lace-up Easter shoes I'd wear on special occasions, the feeling of sleeping on a high 4-poster bed that I could barely climb up on by myself, eating roasted cashews after trips to the doctor's office for yearly immunizations...

Perhaps most interesting are the things I don't remember.

I have no memories of my mom and dad together. I don't recall any details of their separation or divorce. I don't know how the process went when my mom and I moved to Albuquerque from the country house we lived in when I was born. If I'm not mistaken, my parents split when I was five years old. I realize it's early to remember anything with clarity, but I'd imagine I'd have at least some recollection of our family life before that point...

Sometimes I have the distinct feeling that there is something from my childhood that, if I could only begin to remember, would unlock a lot of my current struggles. Perhaps if I could travel back in a time machine, back to those essential early years, I could at least know where to start my work.