It’s a cliché to talk about how one’s memory works, how, when we get older, we have no idea what happened earlier today but we can bring lyrics from 50 year old songs quickly to mind, and we can remember certain moments with chilling clarity—maybe more chilling because there’s no reason for this or that memory to have been stuck in one’s mind. Does it indicate some trauma that I’ve been suppressing?
I speak with my old boss at AIG, a wonderful man named Robert, once in a while, and recently he was surprised by whom I remembered. But then Robert had to know EVERYone at AIG, and then he had a tenure at Mass Mutual where he had to know everyone else. My wife Nancy’s memory is typically much better than mine, but there are moments from the early part of our marriage the minute details of which I can recall while she thinks the whole episode probably never happened.
Childhood memories pose a different question of understanding: I may have been three or four. My family was in Pennsylvania. We, my parents, brother and sister, must have been driving back from one of our grandparents’ homes: Dad’s mother and brothers and their families lived in Glen Lyon, PA, which is near Nanticoke, which is near Wilkes-Barre. My mother’s parents lived in Mansfield, PA, which is near nothing. Forty minutes away is Elmira, New York.
So we were in south central Pennsylvania somewhere. I don’t know why we stopped at a certain church. It was enormous (remember, I was three or four), grey, and impressive. Suddenly we were accosted by an older woman. Was it unexpected or were we there to meet her? I believe she spoke only to my mother, which makes some sense, as my mother was Presbyterian, and, though my father was Roman Catholic and attended church regularly, he wasn’t familiar with a lot of people in the Church. This woman—I remember her as large, wearing a hat, glasses, greying hair, very noisy—greeted us enthusiastically, and there was a lot of gabbling. So maybe we were a surprise to each other. How did Mom know her?
Suddenly this woman turned to me and jovially announced, “And this must be Stu.”
Of course not, and no one in our family before or since has been named Stuart or Stewart, but I tried to be engaging and unjudging as I spoke up to correct her, “No, I’m GEORGE.”
But she had already turned back to my mother and was gabbling at her again. My correction, as all little children’s in that situation, went unremarked. Of course, adults in their situation—haven’t seen each other in years, perhaps a surprise encounter in a church—aren’t going to pay attention to a little kid. An unremarkable moment soon ended, and we continued our drive home.
Yet. Why did that stick with me? Why that and not something else about the trip? Maybe the woman was so large and intimidating that the incident stuck with me? It is impossible to know. Perhaps in understanding why we remember this but not that, we would know ourselves a lot better. Too many mysteries intervene.
Below are my mother's parents, probably 40 years before my encounter in the church.
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