As Memory Begins

I have been conscious of the curtain on my past prior to age five, a stage of my life that is murky and staged among the relics of fading Kodachrome images and even black and whites, the most vivid being of me bathing in a tin washtub at my grandparents' in Quebec.  Even the first year of school in 1972, at age 5 1/2, is vague, but the period around the start has long marked the distinction between remembered and unknown.  There are vague memories - one of toddling lost in an airport or train station - but that among others may be from the realm of dreams rather than remembered experience.

With Gabriel now at that cusp - where memories he will be retained into adulthood - I have become more conscious that the time we spend together is actually getting stored away in his thoughts to leave more lasting memories. These current moments are not going to be buried in his subconscious to lay dormant to well up during his dreams and leaving ineffable traces on his consciousness.

At this point I can confidently say that he will know me for the sprints that we have from point to point and that he always wins when we are walking somewhere.  He will know, by rote, my paranoia about traffic at intersections and through parking lots and my insistence that we hold hands. (I have no idea when I will relent and trust him to walk alertly at my side.)

These clear memories are taking root as our bond becomes more tangible and a point of reference for him throughout his growth in the years ahead. If he takes up running more seriously, he will definitely remember my coaching moments about not looking back when he runs, and instead to listen for the clamour of gaining footsteps and heavy breathing to know if a competitive threat the approaches, or to watch for looming shadows if the light and route affords him that.

Last night, the recall was being wired with several sprints on the sidewalks to the train station and then from our stop onto home and I was filled with this contentment that I was not just getting him home but making memories as well.

When we got home Gabriel may have been picking up on my reflection as well.  He wandered into the office that was his bedroom after he was born and mused about it being his room.  I played the role of docent and told him where his crib used to be, though I forgot to tell him where he was rocked every night.  I did disclose to him, however, the occasion when I proudly hoisted him high out of his crib and rattled his head off the spinning ceiling fan.  I still remember the look of shock and shattered trust as the startling pain impacted him repeatedly and it was good to have that moment to fill in the past a bit and let him know that Dad is humbly fallible.  (I might have even given some context to one of those subconscious memories that are lurking about.)

The comforting realization is that apart from the routines that are familiar to him, there will be more likelihood that one-off events will now stick with him without repetition.

Memories As The Lad Turns 4

There are moments of my son's life thus far that well up from out of nowhere to grace me with memories that I never imagined I would have.  In and of themselves, they are too brief to fill post of their own, but perhaps together they add up to more than passing anecdote. At this point, as he turns four, they are among the things that I will tell him about himself to give him some sense of his character, his talents and narrative. The question is how much the stories will amount to as time goes on and he forms memories through experiences I will not witness or document.

The first fond moment is from when he was barely 10 weeks old and the milestones were supposedly a bit further down the road... steps, words, sentences, commando crawl... but on the evening of January 21, 2012 - a number numerologists would probably drool over - his first gurgle of the laughter. I have heard it since in so many forms, including forced, vaguely maniacal and downright heart-melting.  On that night, it was a simple, pure peal of joy that moistened the eyes.  And so I started compiling the highlights of his life to report back to him to bridge these early years when his memories slip away rather than form and I wait to pass them on at a time when he is more autonomous and he compiles memories and evolves with less and less of my storage and memory.

There are some things that could remain evident without much intervention and I hang onto them as points of pride. Whether I tell him or not may have little bearing, especially if it is an innate thing that he is hard-wired for.

For instance, his first indication of a precocious connection with music is a eureka I pass on as sign of talent that has been handed down or skipped a generation.  After a few attempts of subversively slipping some jazz into his musical diet thanks to a video that featured a train, he called out "train" upon hearing a completely different acoustic arrangement of the same song while we were in the car.  That may be one of those unique things that I will not have to tell him about but can trust.

There are other moments that I simply hang on to as a joy of fatherhood. This summer, while I was coming home from work, I checked my phone to fire up the audiobook I was listening to. Before I got to it, I noticed that there was a text with an image from my wife and was puzzled by the solid black form that appeared with the image she sent. I opened it and was treated to a drowsy rendition of "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" without any performance anxiety and his voice catching earnestly throughout as a profound reminder of the innocence and the delicateness that define even this robust boy at age 3.  I immediately replayed it again and again on my way home.  When the time comes I'll play it back for him and his embarrassment at the poignancy may mellow with the passing of time and the realization of how early he was generous in this way.

There are those embarrassing moments that we will remind him of, such as his first encounter with wasabi, which we warned him about to no avail.  He threw a sizeable dollop into his mouth and suffered no end of pain.

However many memories I accumulate of him, there will still be gaps as he leads his own life and he accumulates stories to share with friends as he grows older, forms his personality and creates his narrative going forward. There has been an independent streak from a very early age. When I first dropped him off at daycare three years ago, I hung around for about 15 minutes to ensure that he knew that I was leaving him behind and sure that he was aware enough to not panic and wail when he finally realized I was gone. The last thing I wanted to do was make him reliant on strangers during such a moment of anxiety, no matter how professional and experienced they are in addressing those moments in life (and they are.) Instead, he sat indifferent to my farewell waves and I only gave up and got on with my day when he toddled over to a new schoolmate and started playing with her. They still play (and play well) together most of the time at daycare and she is among the guests attending his fourth birthday party in a few days time.  As soon as he started playing, I got the feeling that it was safe for me to go.

From that moment, I have never had much trouble acknowledging, though not necessarily accepting, that I am not going to be there for every moment of his life as he grows up. I still beam at the second-hand account of one occasion at daycare when he relieved one of the staff from the challenge of consoling one of his classmates.  A girl was sobbing into the arms of one of the staff at the daycare when Gabriel approached and extended his arms for a hug. The daycare worker regarded it as an "I need one too" gesture at a moment when her attention simply wasn't available to him. He was brushed off for a few moments, but stood his ground until the staff interpreted the gesture as "Let me help," instead of "my turn." The daycare worker let go of the crying child and Gabriel gave the girl a hug and calmed this classmate.  After the hug, she gambolled off, her troubles eased and forgotten. He then extended his arms to give the day care worker a hug. He wasn't even two years old. That account of his compassion is another reminder of the innocence and sensitivity that children possess.

There are other secondhand accounts and other bits of data that will find their way to me as time goes on and less and less that I will compile on my own for him. Accounts will differ and conflict or I will give a more detached version of events than he will at times. I have no idea when the secondhand stories about him will come to me or what they will amount to, but they will each be a part of a life that he will control in a way that will enchant me, make me weep, beam, burst out laughing, or recall with embarrassment how much he is like his father. But I will never quite control it. The best I can do is bear witness to as much of it as possible and occasionally fill in the gaps for him when the story or the self at stake are unfamiliar to him.

Abbegard!! Or... As Memories Fade

As Gabriel closes in on 4 years of age, I thought it was time to start blogging about screwing him up raising him.

Why now?

It has not been a matter of suddenly finding the time to get to it. The notion had come to me on a regular basis over the years and even prior to his arrival. There were times that were learning moments for me when his ability to be excited, open, capable of resetting his moods in a split second and so many other things that he has the youthful capacity to do that I have treasured and taken pause to savour.

At the same time, there are moment of his life that he has moved on from and left behind without him even knowing and they are things that I know will predate whatever living memory he can look back to a few years from now. My wife and I and others who have seen Gabriel grow will be able to tell him the things that he used to do but already those conversations leave him puzzled and perhaps even nonplussed as we try to suggest where he has come from and he -- yes even at this formative stage -- was.

When watching Inside Out with him we had to have a conversation with him about the Memory Dump: a dark, forbidding place in the mind that was frightening with its darkness and fade of past. It may have seemed an apocalyptic setting to him, a place of demise although on so many levels that we are otherwise indifferent to. At least we are indifferent to it when we lose those early memories without much contemplation.

In Gabriel's case one of those early disposals to the memory dump was a made up word he sprung upon us when he was just becoming verbal. Amidst all the mama's, dada's and other combinations that my wife and I deciphered during his first year came this utterance: "Abbegard!" We struggled to figure out what it meant.  The first thought was that he had latched on to someone else's use of "Oh my God" around him and we went through mental checklists of our own possible use of it and then other people who may have been careless enough to use it around him. Time went on, the checklists turned up empty and we tried to figure out other interpretations.

Apgar? He might have heard the nurses or doctor complete their assessment of him while his mother and I were far too distracted to notice such a calculation being uttered.

Avant garde? That would have been just the tonic for this artsy Dad who would rather pressure him into art school that accounting, engineering or law.

All blue car? No. We didn't even get an impatient shake of the head that we, his parents, were already not gettting it and were out of touch.

All blue cars? Okay, never mind.

I wondered if it was some remnant from a previous life, a soul that had revisited this world clinging to that random fragment of language. A talisman to carry it back to consciousness and to shape the next road that he would follow.

After a while, my wife and I pieced together a pattern. It occurred at moments of celebration or excitement or simple bliss that he wanted to share or punctuate. Abbegard (my spelling) was a highlight of the day, a sign that things were good, great.

Other words formed and over time his single word disappeared. It was pushed aside by a more rational or shared connection to what we see and share each day and eventually it was gone.

As we watched the movie and tried to explain to Gabriel what happened in the Memory Dump and tell him that it was happening to him, I told him about his word and its demise from his vocabulary. He tried repeating Abbegard a few times. He was half-hearted and it was evident that the resurrection was brief, already ending.  His word had no chance to return to him.

And so I will write. To preserve those aspects of me, my wife, him and being with him that will not be as indelible as I hope when I am in the moment that I flood with their power. I look to the poignancy, the failure, the renewal and joy that live and morph into one another with such casual, passing power at any moment.