The (short) stories we carry
Hello you X that marks the spot.
Today's dispatch will be shorter (and maybe sweeter) than usual, since Mom has come to town for an impromptu visit this week. We have spent a delightful few days of "high" contrast activities: enjoying high tea at Crossroads Tea Room in Perth (enthusiastically recommended to those who have a penchant for over-the-top ritual centered around hot beverages), learning about getting high at the Tweed Cannabis Manufacturing plant (#OldGalGoneWild), and soaring to new culinary heights as Mom joined in on our gourmet club event last night (and PS: coincidentally, we were exploring the theme of "roots". With two of the six members of our gourmet club having sprung from her loins, Mom's attendance seemed particularly well-timed).
But enough about our itinerary. As we were elegantly slurping our warm, milky tea on Thursday afternoon-- sun pouring through the window, pinkies in the air and crustless-finger-sandwich crumbs on our lips-- Mom recounted her memory of a story she read in 4th grade about a family dinner gone very awry (see below to read it yourself). She recounted the story as she remembered it, having carried the final image of the story around with her for over 60 years. It was so vivid for her, and so Leah tried googling to see if we could find this random short story in a 4th Grade Reader from the 1950s Cape Breton public school board...
... and lo and behold, we did find it, easily. And what was also striking was that Mom's recounting of the story from memory was almost verbatim (and this from a woman who has digital locator tags on her phone and keys because she keeps losing them...). It is a very short story called "The New Food" by Stephen Leacock for those who want to read it (no spoilers as it has a twist/ twisted ending). But it has had a profound impact on Mom's life: this short story-- a small momentary blip of input in childhood, a mere whisp of thread in the wide-ranging tapestry of a long life well-lived-- the story had a deep personal resonance and made a profound emotional connection that she has carried her whole life.
The conversation made me think about all of the bits and bobs we pick up along the way through life (especially during childhood), and how they impact how we live our lives. Memory is such a powerful influence on how we make our way in the world. And as Daniel Kahnman has described in "Thinking, fast and slow", our 'remembering self' has enormous influence over our 'experiencing self'. “The experiencing self does not have a voice. The remembering self is sometimes wrong, but it is the one that keeps score and governs what we learn from living, and it is the one that makes decisions. What we learn from the past is to maximize the qualities of our future memories, not necessarily of our future experience. This is the tyranny of the remembering self.”
I appreciated Mom sharing this experience from her childhood, and her reflections around the ripples this one short story has wrought on the surface of her life pond (and so maybe my life pond too as her daughter). Giving voice to the memories we hold on to, understanding their connection to the present (as well as the choices we have made in life that led up to that present)-- this process of disaggregation, recognition and reflection is a big part of being able to understand ourselves with all of our habits, thought ruts and assumptions, and create potential new avenues for our future selves to explore.
It apparently is possible to live a life without pain, but for the rest of us, examining the past is usually a good way to understand-- and sometimes transform-- the future. Not that Mom necessarily wants to change anything based on the reflection she shared, nor that the reflecting we do is always earth-shatteringly transformative. Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But I do think that the effort to understand the "remembering self" is one path to explore as we try to make sense of what truly motivates us, what scares us, how we love, what we value and how we make the choices that we do in life.
But wait! Perhaps all of this talk of "remembering self" is feeling a bit too intense on a sunny Sunday morning? Then please feel free to spend 10 minutes scrolling through this visualisation of the animals that live in the deep sea and feel like a kid again
Still too much realness? Then check out this video of a goose parade.
From one reflective person to another, I am glad that we have the ability to drink tea and remember terrifying short stories together. I hope you enjoyed this dispatch, and have a memory-filled week!
Until next Sunday,
The Earnest Platypus