Memories: What is real and what gets us through

Christmas is here. It's always packed with activities that add to my fond memories. So because it's Christmas Day and the house is quiet, I started thinking about memories and what they mean to me.

My earliest memory is from around age two, I think. I know I was very small. I was standing on a high step, my mother insisting that I stand there so she could take my picture. I can't really remember what my dress looked like, only that I really liked it. But I did not like standing on that high step. I was afraid. Afraid that I would fall and my mother, who was my world, could not catch me because she was too far away--all the way at the bottom of those high steps.

But if I could ask her about that, she would have her own version of that memory. (She died in 2007.) Or she might not have remembered it at all, except for the little photograph from that day. Maybe she would remember the dress because she picked it out for me, or remember the camera, because it was hers.

My brother remembers things I don't remember at all from our childhood. He remembers some things completely different from my versions.

Recently I started reading a book about childhood trauma. It was written in the 1990s, so the information could be different if there have been more studies since then, but in that book the author illustrates cases where memories have faded, or melded together into a new truth. The point being, it is important for children to talk about the trauma as soon as possible after it happens, because if they hold it in it negatively affects their adulthood. It is very difficult for them to work through it as an adult because the memories are altered by time. They no longer know what is real and what is imagined, or what their minds have altered. Some things they believe to be true, such as locations, and what they could see from that location during the trauma, don't make sense. For example, the location and that view are not congruent. Our brains are a complex organ.

Until recently I had an almost photographic memory. I couldn't remember everything the way people who do have a photographic memory can, but I could remember a lot.  I could recite back, word-for-word, conversations I had with people. (It was a great tool for a reporter to have.) My mother would remark on how wonderful my memory was when I was little, and I was the go-to person when someone couldn't remember something.

Memories of my hometown, my childhood friends, some of the good family moments, and all of the ones I have of my children are like little treasures for me. Not everyone cherishes memories like I do. Life seems to be just a series of events that are lived and forgotten. No big deal.

For me it is fun to reminisce, and I really enjoy doing it with friends and family.