Last night Mark and I found ourselves looking at old pictures of our family. Some were funny, and some brought back great memories. You forget how darn cute your kids were. There were pictures of vacations and also pictures of events, we have been a very busy family. I think sometimes we get so caught up in moving forward in our lives that we do not savor the special times we have together.
Aly, came to me the other night upset, because she had a writing project for school. She had to write about a childhood memory and she told me she could not remember anything from her childhood. Now, in the past I would not have believed her, but I had been through this with her Dad a few years ago.
Mark and I were taking a marriage enrichment course through a local church. During the course we were asked to have various conversations about our lives to help each other understand why we thought like we did about many topics. One of the topics was our childhood. Mark insisted through the whole course that he could not remember anything about his childhood. I thought he was a big fat liar, and that he just did not want to participate in the course. Great, here we are trying to enrich our marriage, and instead we are fighting! After some heated exchanges, I started to realize that he sincerely did not have a lot of memories to share.
As we chatted last night about Aly not having memories, we discussed our past situation with the marriage course. Mark feels that when you have an uneventful childhood, with no major traumatic situations and no real troubles, that you do not have a memory store to draw from. Mark thinks that those of us that have had a more difficult up bringing have memories because of our troubles. He thinks this happens for two reasons. First, the bad memories, since you spend years trying to understand them and move past them, and second the good memories are so few and far between that you hang on to those as though they are something special and worth treasuring.
I am not sure if I agree with his thoughts on this, but it has given me something to think about. I am wondering if I am a better person today, because I can remember my childhood and do not want to repeat some of those mistakes. I am also wondering if the life that my children have been leading has stunted them somehow. Can you imagine thinking all along that you are the perfect mom, doing all the right things and then to learn that your children remember none of it, because they had such a great childhood? It makes me question this whole quest of mine.
I really was a little taken aback when Aly was getting frustrated about having such a good childhood that she remembered none of it. All I kept thinking was "Boo hoo, poor you!" "I am here working like a dog to make your life a good one and you are disappointed anyway. What the heck?" At this point, it is probably not worth changing my game plan with the kids. I am not a perfect mom yet, so there is still a chance that I can do something really crappy that they will remember later in their lives. In the mean time I will be pulling out all the photo albums and walking my kids down memory lane. It is the least I can do, since I am the one that has stunted them. You know, this perfect mom thing can really be a pain sometimes!
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