Somehow though the fact that I worshiped her didn't prevent us from fighting. We were in the room I shared with my five-year-old brother Nick. He was there too, and probably so were Russel and Sammy, the other daycare kids. The two beds--my brother's big wooden one, mine white metal, small--had become a sultan's palace and a magic carpet. We were being characters from the Disney movie Aladdin.
Unfortunately, there could only be one Jasmine.
"You be Jasmine's tiger," Katherine told me, or something like that. So I was for a while, but Katherine, jumping from bed to bed, was obviously having too much fun. I'm not exactly sure what form the argument took. I don't think I ever got to be Jasmine. The boys looked on as both of us girls ended the day in tears.
Part 2:
This was difficult. Most of my earliest memories are about three seconds long, and don't really make much of a story. For this one, I'm not sure if all these events actually occurred in one day. I'm not sure exactly what Katherine said to me word for word, but I know the gist of her message. My memory of the room's layout is vague--I know those were our beds, but the mental image I have of them comes from later memories, not this one. I think though that if I were to use this in a memoir, I wouldn't have a problem with calling it Creative Nonfiction. I'm pretty sure the bones of the story are accurate. I might reinforce my uncertainty a little for an actual memoir--stipulate that I really don't know exactly what was said. Overall though I think the memory is fairly accurate--and the details I might have gotten wrong aren't details that matter, either to the story arch or to the people involved.
As for Joan Didion's claim that "if you remember it, then it's true": I do believe that the essence of a memory can sometimes be more important than what actually happened. At the same time, I have some memories that I've intentionally blocked, and now, if asked to revisit them, I think large portions of the truth would be missing. So I would only take Didion's claim so far. If you remember it, it's true for you. Sometimes it's also true for the rest of the world, and sometimes through your truth you can help others reach a deeper truth than they would have with "just the facts." I think personal truths like Didion's are valuable, sometimes more valuable than a surface truth about which everyone can agree. But that's different from saying, "if you remember it, then it's objectively true for everyone."
I remember pretending that my best friend at the time, we were probably 4, and I would always fight over who got to be the pink power ranger. This memory seems really strange because I never liked anything that had to do with pink. Never the less, we argued and during one of these times I went home with scratches all down the right side of my body because we thought that if power rangers could jump around and survive we could manage jumping from the tree to the roof of the garage. Obviously, this didn't go well. I haven't thought about this in a really long time, but you story just reminded me of it. It wasn't uncommon for me to have a collection of neon colored band aids all over me when I was little. Falling out of the air though was a new experience though.
ReplyDeleteI bet though if you talked to Alison she would have a different story about that day and how I came to fall. It's really reminiscent of the idea that if you remember it, it's true. She might even say that it was all my idea to go up in the tree. In any case, thanks for the memory!
I really enjoyed this, Rose. The opening lines were awesome; they really drew me in. I totally remember feeling this way about older girls. They were so awesome just because they were older, and they could do so many more things and had so many more ideas than me! I remember feeling this way about my older cousin. I thought she was so cool and I wanted to be just like her. She was funny, could read, had things I wanted, could hang out with the older kids and wore makeup and styled her hair. It's a funny thing pondering the reasons we look up to people. Sometimes people don't deserve to be looked up to, but we don't find that out until later. In addition, when we admire someone, it's easy to set aside their character flaws in the pursuit of their returned affections.
ReplyDeleteI don't know for sure if everything happened exactly how I remember it, but I do think the point comes across--I admired the older influences in my life. This is something I should remember because now I have a little cousin who likes to hang out with me and do everything I do, so I should remember what it was like to have the company of an older role model!
Stephanie Haugen