Thursday, March 08, 2007

The Act of Remembrance

I've got some thoughts on the topic, but haven't been able to marshal them in an orderly fashion. Happily, there are others picking up the slack:

Mary remembers her brother.

Searchie attends And I Still See Their Faces: The Vanished World of Polish Jews and recalls a visit to Tykocin — manifold remembrance.

Pattie serves up a pointed reminder.

And this excerpt from Danielle Trussoni's memoir Falling Through The Earth has lodged itself in my consciousness and disrupted many a predictable surge in its waters. Favorite quote: "I was grateful that my father had made the videotape. It was a record of my childhood free of the distortions of memory. The tape helped me to see that many of my recollections had been colored by love and anger — that I had often made my father in the image of my emotions." Emphasis mine, because boy-howdy: this father knows his soon-to-be-grown daughters will most certainly subject their childhoods to the distortions of memory.

2 comments:

paul bowman said...

Thanks for those.

Cowtown Pattie said...

Distortions of memory...

I think I corrected mine in the last few years of my father's life. Not so distorted or tortured any more. I understand now, from an older adult perspective, what triggered a lot of the bad.

Thanks, WP!