Memory - Can We Choose to Remember?

A Recipe For Core Memories (Day 95)

Friends,

Yesterday, we introduced the concept of Core Memory and talked a bit about how faulty memory generally can be. How can we be certain about what we remember? One reader (and my wonderful editor by the way, Susan, suggested that regardless of the factual truth of a memory, the construct of a personal truth can be a take away from remembering. In another case, a reader pointed out how memories can be associated with emotional weight, and that’s what I’d like to talk about today.

If you’d like, if you missed yesterday’s discussion, you can read that here: Memory - Led Zeppelin and a Chevy Nova.

~ Dan

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About three months after this picture was taken, Neil Armstrong landed on the moon and I watched it live. And yes, I’ve always been this suave.

When I was three and a half years old, we went to my grandmother’s house where a lot of the family had been waiting and were gathered around the TV. We were there a long time. I don’t remember anything about that day before or after.

I was sitting on the floor. My family was behind me. On the screen was a black and white fuzzy image of what looked like a creature of some sort climbing down a ladder. There were words that I didn’t understand and I was bored. I recall two things:

First, my family was very quiet, which was unusual.

Second, my father bent down next to me, leaned in close to my ear and said “I want you to remember this. This is important. Pay attention and remember this.” I don’t recall if he used those exact words, but something to that effect.

So I did. I paid attention. Hard. I focused all my little brain on whatever the heck was happening. A few moments later, the figure on my screen said, “Ok, I’m going to step off the LM now.” And then a few moments after that, he said. “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

My dad did that for me. He imprinted my memory so that literally the first thing I remember in my life was the moon landing. Without his words and his intensity, I doubt that would have stuck. Pretty amazing.

You can see the actual film and read a story about the camera that was used to film those first steps here: First Live Lunar Broadcast

Many years later, I looked all this up. It turns out, Neil Armstrong would have touched the moon’s surface at nearly 11pm EST. That also means that either they kept me awake or woke me up to watch it.

I mention this not-so-little remembrance because the latest social media parenting trend is to “create” core memories for your kids, and generally speaking you really can’t do that, at least according to clinical therapists and brain scientists. But my dad did do that for me in a way. It worked.

So, can you or not? Have all these adventures with Little Bean been for nothing or will something stick?

Here’s what I think. I think you can. But you’ll never be able to predict what part will stick, why or what emotional weight it will carry. I was not even four years old. I certainly remember watching the first moon landing and I’m grateful my father planted that memory for me.

But… when I think about it, it has no emotional weight for me. I don’t feel nostalgic about it. I can’t smell it or sense it. One of the greatest moments of - perhaps - all humankind and I don’t FEEL anything about it. I only remember it.

Contrast that to being out in a boat at around the same age fishing with my father, or one day when my mother took me to a touch a truck event and I got to touch the giant wheel of a utility truck, or my two older cousins holding either of my hands as I walked along the hot railroad tracks near my grandmother’s house.

I feel those memories in my bones. Those memories are the one’s that drive who I am as a father now. And all those memories stuck organically.

That’s the way to go it seems. Just get out there, do different things, keep trying to just BE with her. Something will stick. I’m sure of it!

I looked hard for a picture of an event I remember and I found one! I remember touching the wheel of this truck and exploring this utility yard. I remember looking at my mother for this picture!