First Memory
Charles was daydreaming while patiently waiting for his turn to enter into the intersection. He’s been doing that a lot lately; thinking about where he came from, his childhood, growing up in a world much different than today. She woke him from his daydreams. “Where are you Charles? Are you going, or what?” She asked. Karen was curious, but Charles believed, with some underlining reasons, she was just being nosy. She wanted to know, she asked him, again, if he would attend Jim’s funeral. Everyone who was anyone in real estate in Lower Topia will be attending his funeral. Not so with Charles. “Not sure I will go” Charles replied with a little uncertainty in his voice. “But you knew him so well. You worked with him on projects, and even shared a beer at the Grill on Main Street,” Karen was trying to remind him of his obligations and respect for a friend. “True, we were good friends, and I am so upset that he died. It will be a little lonelier without him.” Charles agreed. “But,” Charles finished his thought, “although he was a good friend, I never knew his family. They wouldn’t know me from a hole in the wall. Not even sure if Jim ever mentioned he knew me to his family. Why would I go if I don’t know them? I only knew Jim. He’s dead now.” “And,” as an afterthought, “besides, I never really had any other friends in real estate. Going to just say ‘hi’ to the other agents so they would acknowledge I was there, when in fact, I could give a shit if they did acknowledged me, seems wrong.” He sat there now thinking about his own funeral. Who would come? Would his friends come or stay home as he is doing? Karen shrugged her shoulders, and walk on to finish her chores.
How will he be remembered by others after he dies? He figures, he will not be remembered because of who he is, but rather he will be remembered because of the people doing the remembering. He also started wondering about that old man he knew when he was much younger. He thinks he must had been around his age today, the old man that Charles used to criticize because he did things like an old man; walk with more caution, reacted with little patience to events and people around him. Always blaming the younger generation for all the wrong in his world. Now that Charles is his age, he wants to find this old man to apologize. Age finally gave Charles the oppportunity to undertand. He wants to say to that old man that he is sorry for not understanding than. But Charles can’t find him now.
The traffic light is still red. Charles continued with his daydreams. He was wondering if he finally entered into his Golden Years, although he doesn’t really believe he should be formally written into the same category as someone who past his 80th year. He figures he’s only 77. “When are the Golden Years?” Charles remembered 70 was considered old at one time, but now 80 has that designation. Live till 80 and you had a good life; life being a song having its own specific genre acknowledgements. The “Golden Oldies” for him were Presley, Berry, Cole, Little Richard; however, to his son Houston, Collins, Joel, Mellencamp were the names known. If you lived till 90 they won’t even shed a tear; they’ll be too busy getting drunk and celebrating life, not necessarily yours, probably wouldn’t remember you anyway. Who has an attention span that can remember something 90 years old?
Charles found himself reminiscing about his childhood. “How far back does my first memory go? At what age did I finally see and remember what I saw, and made that vision part of my memory? Age 2? 5? Prenatal? Can I actually remember being in my mom’s womb? Undoubtedly she drank wine and smoked cigarettes back then, do I remember the fumes or gettnig drunk? Do I remember being bumped and pushed? Stop with that thought, how can I imagine my parents having sex, especially with me inbetween. “Disgusting” Charles shivered at the image. “That I would have remembered, no? Hey, was that my first claustrophobic experience, is that why I am claustrophobic today? What do I actually remember? Or are the memories I have today simply because I saw a picture in a photo album?” Charles thought.
Charles recalled that day he stood in front of a Victrola; he was a very young child. He was holding on to the leg of a table, on which the record player was sitting. He doesn’t remember it as a real event in his life, just a virtual picture. His mother told him about it, what he did, and she had the photograph to prove it; it was even time stamped ‘August 1947’, he was two years old. The only logical reason he could surmise, as he viewed the photograph, that he was standing there and grabbing onto the table’s leg, was that this would afford him the needed balance to maintain his vertical position. He determined that he was tired of crawling. According to the picture, he wasn’t tall enough to see above the table top, let alone see that it was actually holding anything like a record player on its surface. And “what the heck was a record player anyway?” So, he didn’t know he was endangering the breakable plastic disc itself stuck on a little spindle as it turned in a circle, let alone the machine that played it. His mother told him later that she would remind him repetitively to “let go of the table Charley!” He is trying to remember his mother’s warnings, knowing his mother, naggings would probably be a better description. Her voice had that slight British accent, he remembered. He missed that accent. “You’ll either push the table over, or scratch the record with the needle if you shake the table too hard.” A stern prediction Charley didn’t understand than, and doesn’t remember now. His memory was hungry for a resolution. The only proof that this ever happened was just that picture, and stories. Would these be his only type of memories Charles would have of those days?
Charley would know. That would be cool if he could do that; chat with Charley. But Charles wasn’t ready to face the memories of being emotionally abused. So, he would put off meeting Charlie for now.
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He has been sitting in his car for about seven minutes waiting for it to be his turn to pass through the intersection. It takes a long time to cross over 6 lanes of traffic today in Lower Topia. Daydreams help pass the time.
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Charles does have some early memories that were his own. He remembers Charley being taught his first socially appropriate manners; the difference between how boys cross their leg when they sit and how girls do it. Charley truly didn’t understand the rule was more of a modesty issue than of one’s biological features. He objected; he liked the way girls crossed their legs, it was much more comfortable. He remembered entering the front door of his nursery school classroom; and finger painting, he loved finger painting. He does remember the school was the only house on a Bronx street filled with medium rise apartment buildings. He also remembered walking to his nursing school; it must had been on the same street he lived on. Google maps would support that assumption if that building was his school. He remembers walking on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx with his mother, raising his toy red fire truck in recognition of the real one speeding down the center of the avenue under the elevated subway train tracks. He remembers that some baseball stadium was close by; that was where his father took his brother on certain weekends. He remembers PS 86, only for its musty smell and dingy hallway. Clear memories also existed of images of standing under their apartment, after playing by himself on the streets that circled his home, he would beckoned for his mother for a snack. His mother threw out a peeled carrot wrapped in a napkin as he stood three stories below, he never caught it, ever. He remembered his mother telling him he shouldn’t make fun of the man with a disfigured face, since that could be him if he didn’t stop frowning. There were also memories of living in a large single bedroom apartment at 2878 Cliflin Avenue, Bronx NY; sharing a very large bedroom with his parents and his brother. He remembers his first dinner in his new home at 24 Heath Lane Levittown, NY, was cold butter spread on white bread; the butter was a solid stick and the bread tore apart under the pressure of the hard butter. But those memories were of him as a 3 or 4 or maybe a 5 year old. Nothing earlier. He kept on trying to remember; the light turned green and Charles moved on.
