The Pasta Theory of Memory & Your Personal Beginning of Time

[n2doc]

BY DANA MACKENZIE


In the beginning, my mother is carrying me in her arms as she closes a screen door. I remember her humming as she walks along, and then she sits down on a bench that is surrounded by greenery. That’s all that is left of my earliest memory: screen door, humming, bench, plants. But the most vivid thing is the feeling of being carried. It’s a very comforting memory (although my mother says that I was a fretful baby).

This memory came to me in a dream when I was about 6 years old. The next morning I described the dream to my mother, who was surprised and said, “That’s the house where we lived in Nashville.” We moved away when I was 2, so that’s how old I must have been at the time of the memory. If my mother hadn’t told me that, I’m sure that it would have been lost for good.

Every one of us has a personal “beginning of time,” the first events we recall from our lives. I’ve read a number of these recollections on the Internet, as I prepared to write this article. Some of them are happy, some traumatic, some associated with specific events, others more with sensations. A lot of them come with an external fact that provides a time stamp: the birth of a sibling, a change of address, a birthday. It’s very common for the wispy scraps of information to be supplemented by a parent. One of my favorite examples was the story of a woman who remembered getting her legs caught in a railing when she was 2. Her mother tried greasing her legs with butter to get them out. When that didn’t work, a neighbor brought a saw to take out one of the rails. That scared her enough to wiggle out by herself. She thought the neighbor was going to saw her legs off! The woman says that she only remembers being stuck, the butter, and the saw—the rest of the details were provided by many family retellings over the years.

Why are our earliest memories so frustratingly vague, and why are there so few of them? Why is there a seemingly impenetrable wall between each person and their infancy? For answers, I turned to an expert.

more

http://nautil.us/blog/the-pasta-theory-of-memory--your-personal-beginning-of-time

As a Pastafarian, all I can say is "Ramen!"

[HockeyMom]

1. Pasta reminds me of my Nana,

not my Mom. Nana lived with us growing up. My memories are of her making homemade pasta and drying it on on rope all across the kitchen! My Mom would NEVER do that. It was Ronzoni all the way.

[Warpy]

2. I have a similar memory

Dark green screen door, greenish patterned wallpaper, lamp on a table, lampshade turning the light a decided yellow, glass ashtray, cigarette smoke, being handed off to someone else, less comfortable, and trying to make it known although, curiously, I was unaware of my own voice. Listening to other voices is rather like listening to some of the languages on Figi in this memory.

This has to be a very early memory because by my age of 8 months, my mother noticed I was making very dysarthric attempts at saying common things like "drink of water," "bathtub," and "kitty," among many. Language clicked rather early for me and in my memory, it was a mystery.

[northoftheborder]

3. Having had frequent conversations with my mother over my lifetime about...

....early things I can remember, putting the age with the memory, and reinforcing it. Falling out of highchair, 18 months, grandparents farm - (feeding chickens, the "storm cellar - being carried to it in the middle of the night with angry clouds racing across the sky), and many other farm related events: 2-4 yrs. old. Many, many memories of age 5-6 on.

Some year soon, I am going to record as much of this as I can remember for my grandchildren; the world has changed so much.

[Thor_MN]

9. Do it as soon as you can, and as much as you can.

There's quite a few questions I'd like to ask of my grandparents, including why I have two middle names. I have the same name as my father, his only brother has only one middle name. No one left alive knows why my father has two middle names.

My mom's grandmother had 7 siblings, but I only know the names of 5. My mother's dad had 11 siblings, but I know the names of just 10 of them. I learned of he others from a report my mother wrote in high school, but she does not even remember writing it.

Little things that can't be found any other way than from your relatives, invaluable.

[2naSalit]

4. My first memory

of my life was from the first 36 hours of it. I told my mother all about it when I was five and she was horrified that I could remember it at all let alone the fine details I related. I was able to describe the room, who was there, the time of day that they were there, what everyone was wearing, what was visible out the window... She wasn't comfortable about me for decades after that. I still can recall it at will and the view has never changed.

Unlike most, those memories for me are not so vague.

This is a good topic, have to bookmark it for later.

[hedda_foil]

6. That's incredibly fascinating.

I'd love to hear more about what you remember from that time if you're willing to share. WOW!

[2naSalit]

7. I'll PM ya. nt

[Blue Owl]

5. The acorn doesn't farfalle from the tree...

n/t

[kickysnana]

8. I was about 12 mos old.

I was walking well by then. Mom had had a miscarriage but all I knew was that she was in bed very, very sick. I asked to be able to take a glass of water, with a glass straw from the kitchen into Mom. Hideous dark wallpaper with big flowers on the way,..uneven linoleum on the floor....flat leather hard soled shoes, I slipped, then tripped and broke the glass and straw and could not be consoled because my dramatic little self was sure what I did was going to cause Mom to die...mainly, because I had broke her straw and she needed her straw cause she could not sit up and drink and I knew without water things died. Obviously I already knew about death.

I started talking in sentences at about 6 1/2 months. Had to know about everything worked and never missed a conversation around me, but didn't always process it correctly. My folks always cringed when something like that happened, but also always told us that accidents happen. The reaction was all on me but I still remember being terribly scared and heartbroken.

It took years MS, Lyme Disease and now mini strokes to start to permanently erase memories. For self preservation I buried a lot of them but they were still there if I worked at finding them. I can now watch movies twice over time and even reread a couple books again because I do not remember them word for word. I am surprised what a relief it was when I got over the shock that it was happening. Sometimes bad things have silver linings.

One of my sons was complaining to me about the memory burden just last month. Thought it might be nice to be like most of the rest of the world, at least some of the time.

[greiner3]

10. I don't have 'memories' of it;

In the cognitive sense but I had night terrors of falling, not being able to breathe and being squished followed by bright lights and people all yelling all around me.

I later found out I had been born via forceps because I had stopped breathing because the cord was wrapped around my neck.

I could not breathe for about 2 minutes and there were several doctors and nurses all trying to get me to breathe.

Is this my own 'Beginning of Time'?