Memoirs of a Grieving Gnome
I was born at a very early age. I spent a number of my early years in the arms of another man's wife: my mother.
Yes, I stole that. No, I can't remember who from. However, it's probably no less accurate than any remembrances that I might retail of my early years. Memory plays tricks on you. When we are trying to remember something, we actually remember a sort of a note form of it, and then repopulate it with details. Some of the details we may obtain from other sources than our direct memory, such as stories we have been told about ourselves. Some of the details that we may use to populate the story may be complete fabrications, or taken from some other source.
As one example, shortly after my first birthday, my father took an exchange teaching position in England. My mother, father, and myself traveled to England on a boat, as was common in those days, when boats were more frequent and air travel was still quite expensive, and exotic. Well, I suppose a ship. Ships carry boats. That's how you can tell the difference.
In any case, my father left his teaching job in Vancouver, and taught at Harrow. No, not Harrow-on-the-Hill, although I'm certain that is what my mother would have you believe. But he did teach in the town, or suburb, of Harrow, at the public school there. Or what we, in North America, would call the public school. The local school where the locals went to school.
We spent a year in England. My parents, during the second summer, did some touring of Europe, while I was left with a couple in England. At some point during that year in a bit, we went to an attraction called Beaconscot. This was a miniature village: a village of miniature houses, buildings, structures, and people, that you could walk around in. When I was approximately 10 years of age, I had vivid and detailed recollections of Beaconscot. I even remember having very vivid and detailed dreams about it. The only problem is that when I was about 20 years old, I traveled to England and toured around again. Myself. And I visited Beaconscot. It was completely unlike what I vividly remembered in detail. For one thing, the scale was much larger. What I remembered was built on a scale where a 10-story building would come up to the shoulder of a small child. The actual Beaconscot is on a scale where a three-story building would be about that tall. In addition, the style of the buildings in Beaconscot was much older than I what I vividly remembered with details of much more modern buildings. In addition, the detail of the actual Beaconscot was much cruder than the fine accurate details that I remembered and dreamed about. So, memory is not really to be trusted. This has come back to me, very vividly, in my professional career as a security maven, and particularly in regard to interviewing witnesses about incidents. But I'm getting ahead of myself.
According to my mother, who was never one to let reality get in the way of what she considers a good story, I learned to walk on the ship traveling over to England. This is unlikely. If it is true, then I was very late at learning how to walk: the ship didn't sail until well after my first birthday. Most kids are learning to walk before their first birthday. (Mind you, I have always been a klutz. I have never been good at sports, or anything requiring eye hand coordination. I am no good at fixing things, or building things, or doing anything with my hands. Not even typing, with all the writing that I have done over the years. My handwriting is abysmal, as was my father's before me. I'm dictating this now, even with all the mistakes that Gboard makes, which I will have to fix later, because it's easier than typing. Even when I have to fix all of Gboard's mistakes. Even as an adult, I am unsteady on my feet. So, it is not entirely outside the bounds of possibility that I was rather delayed in learning how to walk. However three months delayed does seem a bit much.)
Anyway, my mother insists that I learned how to walk on the ship. This is because she could then go on and tell people that as soon as the ship docked I was no longer able to walk, and had to relearn how to walk all over again on dry land.
Mother also insisted that, over the course of the year and a bit that we were in England, I learned how to talk with an English accent. When I got back to Canada I had what she considered to be the cutest British accent. I lost it eventually, of course.
But possibly not entirely. In my teens I could distinguish, and, upon request, recreate, at least seven or eight different regional British dialects accents, plus three Scottish accents, and two distinct Irish accents. (Also a skill that I have subsequently lost.)
I retained, briefly, certain physical objects from those days in England. There was a tricycle with chain drive, rather a rarity in North American circles. There was a a stuffed bear, with plastic face. There were also some books from the Rupert series. (No, the bear was not Rupert.)
I retained them briefly because my parents had a strong personal investment in recycling. As my brothers and sisters were born (I was the eldest), these objects, as well as bibs, onesies, shirts, and other children's clothing, stained with spit up, would be handed down to the next one in line. Some of these objects, and clothing, my parents even tried to hand them down to my niece and nephew, when my baby brother started a family. (His wife wouldn't take them. Wise woman.)
I do have some early memories. I remember a room in the basement with material coming in through a window from the outside. I have learned, in later years, that the house that we lived in when I was three or four years old, had a furnace that ran on sawdust. This room was undoubtedly the storage for the sawdust that burned in that furnace.
At about the same time I remember looking at a newspaper, on the floor. It was about some momentous local event. I wasn't reading it: I didn't learn to read until I was at least six. It may have been the collapse of the Second Narrows/Iron Workers Memorial Bridge, or it may have been the explosion of Ripple Rock. I may even have conflated the two stories in memory. I do also recall that, at or towards the end of our time in that house, I was watching a TV, so we must have had one at least that early.
I do remember bathing my baby sister. Or, she was my baby sister at that point. I was only three and a half years older. I do not actually remember changing her diapers, but I am assured that I did. I do remember changing the diapers of all of the others.
No comments:
Post a Comment