My husband had a story that he would tell me in the first years of our relationship. The story was about this incredible house with elaborate painted turned posts on the porch. A previous owner was alleged to have been buried in the front yard in a sitting up position. He remembered this story from when he lived in Dublin, Virginia while he was in junior high school. He told me this story many times. Then one day we drove to Dublin.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
On a hill overlooking the highway on a small plot of land where the
\nsplendid house with the fancy porch trim was supposed to be was an
\nunremarkable looking Mission style house with square porch posts and no
\nother trim at all. Nor was there any fancy paint. The house was the
\nsort that looked as though it never had had any fancy paint. The front
\nyard was a normal looking front yard with no marker of anyone buried
\nthere. If someone was buried there, it would be hard to imagine WHY
\nthey would have wanted to be buried there. The house was old enough to
\nhave been there long before my husband’s junior high years.<\/p>\n
My husband was astonished. It varied so remarkably from his oft told
\ndescription and his memory. It had to have been the same house.
\nWhatever it was about the house that had impressed itself in his memory
\nwasn’t there now and looked as though it never had been. Perhaps this
\nrather unremarkable Mission style house was the fanciest thing he had
\nseen at that point in his life when he was a young teenager? Then, as
\ntime went along and he moved away and saw other houses, he improved on
\nthat house in his memory bit by bit till it was an extravagant example
\nof Victorian architecture. He wanted his memory to be the wonderful
\nmemory that it was. He didn’t want the memory to change or be
\ndiminished by what he saw later in life. So the house got better and
\nbetter.<\/p>\n
Whatever the reason, the same kind of memory magic has happened to
\nme and to him on several occasions. One time when he was an adult and
\nin his early thirties he saw a plaster figure in the collection of a
\nfriend. He offered to pay $10,000 for it, an offer which was rejected.
\nThen he didn’t see the figure for about 10 years. He told me about it
\nand how incredible it was. Finally we went to visit the collector who
\nhad decided to sell the piece. But it wasn’t anywhere near as wonderful
\nas he remembered and he was happy to be able to leave without having to
\nbuy it. It wasn’t really wonderful at all.<\/p>\n
One of my first memories is from when I was two years old and
\nfastened by a harness and a leash to the back porch of the apartment
\nbuilding where my parents lived. There was a huge dog, about the size
\nof a St. Bernard, on the stairs of the porch. If I tried to go near the
\nporch, it barked and threatened me. It was HUGE! Years later I asked my
\nmother about the dog. She remembered it and said that it was a very
\nsmall puppy.<\/p>\n
Another memory was when I was an adult and had gone to an auction. I
\nam an antiques dealer. There was an antique blanket chest there, a
\nsmall chest in the most gorgeous powder blue. I was outbid on the
\nchest. I regretted not having bid higher and I kept thinking of this
\nexquisite blanket chest which I had let get away. Then I saw it again
\nwhen it was brought into an antiques show I was doing. It had grown
\nlarger, darker, and was in not as great a condition as I had remembered
\nit. How could it possibly be the same chest? But it was.<\/p>\n
When Roseanne, the actress, comedienne, and celebrity, spoke up
\nyears ago about the abuse she said she had suffered at the hands of her
\nparents, I was shocked that her parents would treat her that way. Then
\nI heard that they took a lie detector test, both of them, and passed
\nit. The situation appalled me. How could someone lie about their
\nparents. My daughter would never do that. Until she did. Is it too
\nconfrontational to say it that way? Lie might not be the right word.<\/p>\n
I know she reads this and that my using that word will anger her. It
\nmight help if I say that, yes, I think she remembers something about a
\npool and a diving board and being afraid and feeling harangued but I am
\nsure that the actual event differed in the details. <\/p>\n
I don’t know why Roseanne’s and her parents’ accounts of her
\nchildhood are so different but in the case of my daughter, perhaps she
\nis looking for evidence of what she perceives currently as my intrinsic
\nmeanness to bolster her reasons for being estranged from me. Anything
\nin her memory that fits at all into her picture of mean me could help
\npaint her picture more vividly.<\/p>\n
Memory. What a strange and perverse thing it is. It is our friend and then sometimes our enemy.<\/p>\n
I have no memory of the swimming pool incident that she wrote about
\nonline. That was the first I heard of it. The reason it makes no sense
\nfor me to do that, outside of the fact that I am NOT intrinsically
\nmean, is that I am a poor swimmer, can’t jump off a diving board
\nwithout fear, instruction, and encouragement (and I can hardly do so
\neven then), and I can’t swim well enough to save anyone who was a poor
\nswimmer if they jumped off and things didn’t go well. I wouldn’t
\nharangue anyone to jump off a diving board, least of all my daughter. I
\nwouldn’t be able to give them instruction in HOW to jump off a diving
\nboard. Jumping off of diving boards is something that I am rather
\nclueless on.<\/p>\n
However, is it possible that if there were a number of experienced
\nswimmers present at some pool and my young daughter was on a diving
\nboard where I assisted others in encouraging her to jump off the board
\nwhile she was given instruction? Yes, it is possible. I have NO memory
\nof even seeing my daughter on a diving board or of her ever jumping off
\na diving board but it is possible that she was on one many years ago.
\nShe hasn’t told me when this incident occurred or where it occurred or
\nwho else was present so I have no idea of what it is other than what it
\nmight be. It is possible that a nervous fearful child who was on a
\ndiving board for possibly the first time heard well meant words of
\nencouragement as a harangue. Whether this is the explanation for her
\nmemory is another thing that I don’t know.<\/p>\n
Accusing me of haranging her to jump off a diving board has
\nsimilarities to accusing me of haranguing her while trying to teach her
\ncalculus. I am worse at calculus than I am at swimming and diving off
\nof diving boards.<\/p>\n
The pattern here is one of her choosing the only explanation for a
\nmemory of me, a memory that is consistent with her chosen view of me.
\nShe cannot tolerate the idea that there is another explanation of this
\nmemory of me, a kinder gentler explanation. She prefers the one of me
\nas being a meanie. <\/p>\n
Me? Mean? It has only been in recent years that I can bring myself
\nto kill a spider when I find it in the house and only if it is a great
\ninconvenience to catch it, open the window, and put it outside. For
\nmuch of my life I have struggled with being assertive, with going ahead
\nand doing things that are important to me rather than choosing what
\nmakes someone else happy. I spend a fair amount of my time helping
\nother people with no recompense to me of anything except an occasional
\nthank you. I made countless choices in my life where I put both my
\ndaughter and her father first, just as many women who are mothers and
\nwives do. Yet my daughter chooses to remember me as the mean mother who
\nharangued her on a diving board and to vilify me because I defend
\nmyself. <\/p>\n
If this has happened to you that an estranged relative tells people
\nthings about you that didn’t happen in the way that they say that they
\nhappened, perhaps this is the explanation, that the memory fits in with
\nhow they want to see you. All the positive things that happened don’t
\nfit with the memory so they don’t share those memories with people or
\neven think about the positive memories themselves. <\/p>\n
In the movie The Squid and The Whale, the turning point for the
\nolder son in his perception of his divorcing parents was when the
\ntherapist asks him to recall a positive memory and he remembers
\nvisiting the diorama at the Museum with his mother and how he and his
\nmother would talk about the visit to the museum when they were home by
\nthemselves in the pleasant quiet with no one else around. When he
\nremembers the positive, allows himself to remember the positive, he
\nsees his parents in a different light and he changes too. But in his
\ncase, perhaps he wanted to change. <\/p>\n
If someone doesn’t want to change, then there is no hope for change.
\nI’ve known a number of people in my life who don’t want to change and
\nthey have convinced me of that. If someone wants to see you in a
\ncertain way, regardless of how inconsistent with the facts that way is,
\nthen that is the way that they will see you.<\/p>\n
Snicks<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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