"I have more memories than if I were a thousand years old." Charles Baudelaire

            Memories are the most significant thing we create in our lives.  Of course, they have meaning only to us.  The memory of our first kiss  would sound ludicrous to anyone else, but to us, it’s a short trip to heaven.  The courage we were able to find – the lack of a scream on her part – the moisture of her lips – the furtive glance to see if anyone else was in the cemetery – the memory can’t be replicated.

            Many of us have memories of our wedding – the birth of our children – our first big promotion.  Late at night, as we try to get back to sleep after returning from the bathroom, we relive those events.  We hold the infant that turned into such a rebellious teenager.  We revisit our wedding day when we gazed upon our new spouse (generally not our first love) who, it turned out, believed it was nature’s order that man’s duty was to take out the garbage.  Who could’ve guessed it?  The big promotion led to – six months later – your taking the blame for the failure of a project that you didn’t even know existed.  But you took the blame and survived.  Take one for the team.

            At some point, generally after discussing past family events with relatives, you begin to question the validity of your memories.  Others – who were there – remember things much differently.  They don’t remember your dousing Aunt Bertha’s wig with a quart of martinis in a heroic effort to extinguish the flames ignited when she got too close to the candles on top of the cake for Uncle Jack’s 75^th birthday.  They have a vision of Aunt Bertha taking off the wig and stomping on it without any involvement from you.  How could all 8 of them be so wrong?  But, back to the point.

            One must be leery of memories.  A popular psychiatric theory is that memories can be suppressed.  With a great deal of effort, a skilled therapist can bring these subterranean memories to the surface or, as cynics would suggest, be created.  If, indeed, memories can be sublimated does it not follow that memories can also be manufactured? How do you know if that first kiss ever happened?  Maybe you just wish that it had and over the decades, that wish was cemented in your cerebellum.  Maybe your entire life is a created memory.

            Well be that as it may, it is all we have to work with.  I’d take an aspirin if I thought it would work.

© 2014 Lester C. Welch