Early memories, embarrassment and grey paint - by Rosalie Warren
What’s the earliest birthday of your own that you can
remember?
For me, along with quite a few other people, I believe, it’s
my fourth. 1959, that would have been (no, please don’t bother to work out how
old I am). May 1959 in St Eval, an RAF base near Newquay in Cornwall. I have a
number of ‘memory glimpses’ that are clearly linked to this day, though nothing
of much consequence happened, looking back. My grandmother – ‘Nana’ – came to
stay, catching the train from Pontefract in Yorkshire and changing at Bristol…
a long day’s journey which I remember making myself a number of times. It was
always fun to have Nana to stay – she was different and exciting. And on this
birthday she bought me a doll’s pram, a big one, nearly as big as a real baby’s
pram, in my memory at least. It was second-hand – I’m not sure why, as we weren’t
well-off but neither were we very poor. Not that its second-handedness bothered
me – it made it more fun because it was navy blue and a bit shabby, and Nana
got hold of some grey paint and painted it for me.
I was allowed to help, just a little bit. The smell of paint
fills me with excitement to this day. Nana always loved painting – the decorating
kind as well as the arty kind – and I was never allowed to help quite as much
as I would have liked. But the pram, when finished, was a work of art and I
remember waiting impatiently for it to dry so I could put my favourite doll in
it. That would have been Mandy, who bleated ‘Mama’ when you turned her on her
stomach and had wonderful golden hair which, sadly, had become too knotty to
comb.
 |
| Nana, me and the pram (in its pre-painted state) |
In early July this year my granddaughter Daisy will be
celebrating her fourth birthday. I hope her day is as happy as my fourth, and
contributes to a lifetime of rich and happy family memories, as mine has done.
It’s quite strange to think that, at the age of nearly four (three and
five-sixths, as she now proudly tells us), she is already making memories that
she may still recall in her sixties and beyond. No doubt she will laugh at the silly primitive
videos we made of her back then, while looking fondly at them and acknowledging
that they had something special that these latest multi-sensory holograms
(or whatever they have by 2078) really don’t.
And just to try to make this post ever so slightly about
writing and books… it’s our memories, of course, that make us who we are and
give us things to write about, however much we may edit the events and emotions
as we form our paragraphs. My very first memory of all, I think, was of another
birthday – that of my friend Geraldine, who turned four the previous November.
I will never forget her party, because it was the first time (as far as I know)
that I experienced embarrassment. The idea of blowing out the candles was a new
one to me, but I didn’t realise that only the birthday person was supposed to
blow. I took a deep breath and blew, alongside Geraldine, and – oh! The gentle
reprimand – from Geraldine’s mum, I think… ‘No, it’s only Geraldine who has to
blow the candles out.’ I felt my face
burn and I wanted to disappear, be somewhere else, far away, safe at home, away
from this scary family with rules I didn’t know about.
First of many times, of course. Uncountable instances of
exactly that same feeling. Where did it come from? It was new to me; I’m sure
it was. Are we born with the capacity to be embarrassed – are there genes that
encode it? Seems unlikely – you would hardly need to experience embarrassment in
order to escape the encroaching tiger. But if not, then how had I acquired it
at such a young age, with no previous experience as far as I know?
I’m currently reading a huge neuroscience text book, just
from interest and to try to give myself some background to all the popular
articles and books I read on memory, sleeping, dreaming, emotions, creativity
and the rest. So far, the chapter on emotions hasn’t mentioned embarrassment. I’ll
keep looking for an answer. Suggestions welcome. (Is it to stop you suckling
from the wrong mother, perhaps??)
Do you remember the first time you felt embarrassment? I’d
love to know, if you’re able to share. Or any of the other complex
emotions, come to that. Or a birthday that sticks in your mind...
Happy memories!
Ros
Follow
me on Twitter @Ros_Warren
Comments
As a matter of curiosity, how do you eat soup? Spoon facing you or away from you?