Episode

There’s a gap in your life that your memories can never fill in, that only an older person’s memories can fill in for you. It’s the time between your birth (or, if you prefer, your conception) and the earliest moment that you can now recall as an episodic memory, whenever that moment occurred, probably sometime around the age of five, if you’re like most of us, possibly when you were only three or four. 

I used to think a lot about that gap, in the year or two after you were born. It’s staggering to watch an infant learn, savor, chortle, and scream with fury, hurt, or delight, all the while knowing that not one of those vivid moments will be available as memories to that child, grown up. I circled around and back around to this conundrum as I watched you, returning to the subject in poem after poem after poem.

Assuming they survive the vicissitudes of preservation, the thousands of photos and numerous short videos that your mother and I made of you during those pre-episodic years, plus all of the usual documentations that accompany personhood in this era, will stand in for actual memory. Sometimes they may even jog it (and warp it as well). I was startled once, recently, staring at a small snapshot of what appears to be my third Christmas, when I would have been two. I was struck by an eerie memory, not of that moment, but of that day. It had been exceptionally grey and dark, and my Uncle Jack and Aunt Karen had come over to our house to celebrate. Something about the darkness of the photograph, which had to have been taken Christmas morning, brought back in a rush the unsettled combination of strangeness and excitement I had felt.

My pictures were fairly rare, mostly taken on special occasions; yours have been vastly more numerous. I don’t know yet what that may mean for the way your memory functions in you. Here’s just one picture I took of you at your third Christmas when you were two. It’s a terrible picture, but I chose it for the Christmas morning parallel and for the strong sense of that day’s atmosphere. The odds seem long against it giving the same jolt of recognition to you that the blurry, ancient snap of me in my sailor hat gave me. But, maybe.

What can I fill in for you today? I often tell you stories about your younger self. At this age of seven, you prefer the funny stories that will embarrass you when you are older: how you used to like to grunt when you danced in your diaper; the time you hopped off your training potty to stand tall and calmly poop on the floor. When you were four, you loved to hear the story of how you were born from Mama’s belly and how I caught you, almost dropped you, startled by your open eyes. Now that story’s old news. Who knows what you’ll want to know by the time you read this, if you do.

The memories I would like to keep include all the ones when you collected outdoor things, all those leaves, petals, clods of dirt, gobs of mud, worms, beetles, lizards, tadpoles, toads, snails, slugs, butterflies, ants, praying mantises, and bugs. I hope you still like bugs. Even tarantulas never frightened you, and you and I together once ushered a whip-fast snake out of the house. It was non-venomous, of course, but your calm, collected help in herding it back out the door was impressive for a three year-old. In Canada, you used to chase the occasional garter snake, calling them “gardener snakes,” which always delighted me.

Speaking of “gardener snakes,” your language development itself was ordinary and bewitching. You started out calling everything “nyah-nyah,” and it used to amuse me when your mother and your grandmother would both insist it was the other you were naming, each secretly believing, if I had to guess, it was she who you thus addressed. Between one and two, you developed a massive repertoire of animal sounds you could produce on cue. My favorite was the giraffe. “What does the giraffe say?” You remained stoically silent, having been taught that the giraffe says nothing. It gave me hope you would defeat all trick questions when the time came.

There was “ye-yo” for yogurt, “lellow” for yellow, and of course, “Sukha” for Sequoia, which enchanted your mother, sukha being the Pali word for all things good, in the early Buddhist sutras. For years, you demanded that we call you Sukha, and by the time you changed your mind and demanded that we call you Sequoia again, I had a hard time switching back. I still rather like the name you gave yourself.

All cute things must pass, however, and in any case, I doubt that the memories most darling to a father would prove most precious to you. I wish I knew. I rack my brain for some ideally worthwhile scene from your forgotten years, something never caught in any photo, nor narrated to you repeatedly already, nor referenced somewhere in a poem. 

The summer you were two, which was also the summer you discovered leopard slugs and garter snakes, we rented a cabin that was only a modified trailer. You could run around by then, which meant I was already somewhat dependent on your sweet-tempered behavior to not have to worry over much about you running away from me and my bandy legs. You were getting too big already for tottering me to carry, although almost any other adult could still scoop you up easily. In the mornings, your mother, who was battling insomnia, would sleep in, and you and I would entertain each other in the small front room for hours. I was amazed, frankly, at what a good job you did, even at two, of playing quietly so that your mother could sleep while we colored or pretended to be monsters. Still, you had your moments of defiance. After all, you were a toddler.

One sunny morning we drove over to Wendy Harlocks’ place, to pick up something she had for us and to spend a little time with her. When I was ready to get back in the truck and needed to buckle you into your car seat, the imp mood struck you. You refused to climb in, then you ran around the trees near the truck and hid. Then you hopped out of reach. After a while, I stood by the driver’s door simply waiting. Wendy asked if I wanted her help grabbing you and seating you forcefully into your chair. I said, no, I trusted you would heed me eventually and get in. Besides, I couldn’t always count on having a spare adult around to catch and carry you for me. After a while, Wendy shrugged and went back into her house. (Years later, she asked me “Did you ever coax her into the truck? I mean, I assume you did. The next time I looked you were gone.” But I hadn’t really coaxed you, that’s the thing.)

For a minute or two, after Wendy had left, you continued playing the defiant little truant. And then you looked at me with some kind of comprehension I’m still not sure I could explain. “Okay, Papa,” you said, nonchalantly. “I sit in my seat.” And you climbed up contentedly and let me buckle you in. I felt neither triumphant nor relieved, exactly. I felt like we had a deal, and I felt that I, who couldn’t chase or capture you, was also content with it.

I wish I could give you back that memory, that contented expression of yours to savor. It was like a pact between us that we kept, and although you sometimes stalled or complained, after that you never gave me much trouble about climbing into a car again. (Although you did go through a silly phase when you insisted on getting into the car through the door opposite or farthest from the seat you were aiming for.)

If you could remember that episode for yourself, perhaps you could also explain to me exactly what you felt. That’s what finally locks a memory in, what gets the distortions and facts to gel--when we remember, when we think, this happened, way back when, and this is how it felt.