Memories
“I thought: My father is gone. If a don´t act quickly, his entire life will vanish along with him.” (Auster 4)
When we don’t want to forget something, we really can’t control it. Everything is inside our mind, specially inside our memory.
Now that I have been thinking about the concept of memory, I arrived to the conclusion that was very complex to try to understand human mind and the way that it influenced one’s acts. Depending on the importance that each person gives to his or her acts it will be easier to retain such events. This is why my definition of memory is the ability to remember important events in each person´s life that help to reconstruct the past. This is similar to the web´s definition: “The mental faculty of retaining and recalling past experiences” (Free Dictionary Dictionary)
For starting, I would like to say that I have very little memories of myself at the age of 2 or 3, but the ones I have make me happy because it is special to remember how I acted in those moments. It is a very amazing period of life. Nevertheless, the specific moments that I remember, are related with my kindergarten. It was called McMillan.
Normally, I would never remember suddenly the things that I lived there, but when I go to see photo albums I transport myself into that moment.
First, the element that remembers me the most the time when I went to kindergarten, besides pictures, is to find my old uniform. It is a small pink dress, with a blue “bow tie” and small white lines. This dress appears every time that I look for a costume or a special dress that I don’t keep in my closet.
By another hand, another situation that makes me remember my childhood is to find in my closet, right next to the hair accessories, the bottoms that I had from each grade that I spent there. These buttons are small, white, with little bears that hold balloons and my written name with the grade. They are so small and cute that I just can’t imagine myself running all over the place with the uniform and those buttons.
At last, and for someones the “funniest” memory, when we are in important family meetings and all my uncles and aunts start remembering the past. After everyone tells an anecdote, it comes my mom’s turn. She starts laughing and then she remembers my accident. She says: One day when my daughter was at the kindergarten and I was working, I received an emergency call in which a teacher told me that my daughter had felt from the swings and had blood all over her mouth. After I heard that, I went out running to look for a taxi because I had no car and I arrived the fastest I could to pick her up. When we arrived to the dentist he told me that her gums were cut due to the hit, but that her teeth were fine. For healing the gums, it was necessary to put a kind of gum on top of the impact zone and take a lot of care by eating soft food.
At the moment that my mom ends this story I suddenly remember small episodes like falling from the swing, blood in my hand and my mom in a cab.
Another fantastic memory I have is about the moment that I lived some years ago, in which I convinced my parents of having a dog. This was actually funny because we almost lost the puppy due to the indecision of my parents in regards to the responsibility we were going to have. The puppy was from my uncle, he is the owner of the mother of the dog and the day the puppy was born he named it Nachito because that day was my father´s birthday. The day my brother and I finally convinced my parents to keep Nachito was very special and made us happy. He was a small, white, cute puppy that loved to run and play with the ball or small plastic bones. Now a days the things that make me remember the time when had the first puppy are to hear someone that calls him Nachito because “ito” makes it sound smaller than he is, when I go with my family to make exercise to the “ciclovia” and people refer to it as if it were a puppy; and finally, every Novermber 11 because is the birthday of my father and my dog. I think that this third reason is the one that most make me remember the past because is a day where I can compare how things have been changing, getting old and is an opportunity to recognize which things have brought good things to my life.
Also, I think that having the opportunity to study at GLM has been the most important because it is very challenging and that effort that I have done has taught me that is possible to achieve difficult things. This is why there are some pictures or people or questions that make me remember I have no always been from GLM and that I lived things that made me the way I am right now. Now that you know this has been a very challenging period of my life, I tell you that I don´t remember I come from another school until somebody ask me or when I have to go to “escuela media” looking for my brither or a teacher. But, what makes me remember the most my entrance to the school is to see Diego Salgar. This happens because in 8th grade he was my spanish teacher and that was one of the biggest efforts I have ever done to pass a school grade. From this experience I realize that the next years here were not going to be easy in any sense.
On another hand, now that I am 18 years old, I know I have not lived so many birthdays but I´m very proud of remember the most important ones or at least that is why I think because I can´t remember all of them. I think that the most important was my first birthday ever. Recently I found some videos in which y father taped my fist party and I saw the happiness in each member of my family, I hope you can imagine how surprised I was when I saw that every one loved me just because of being part of their family, without taking into account that they didn´t know me. That, for me, is pure and perfect love. This love that people give to me each August is what makes my birthday a special day and thankful for having the capacity to remember most of those days.
These are the most important reasons why my birthdays make me nervous and the first days of August are very exiting because I know that I am going to receive a lot of attention but I don´t know if I am going to have any surprise. For example, in my 15th birthday my parents took a “tuna” group and made me dance in front of my whole family with friends and cousins.
After 18 years of hearing, learning, living and seeing, I think that learning to ride bike is one of the most difficult things to learn. This is because you must reach an equilibrium zone and a minimum of speed so you would not fall from the bicycle. When I learned to ride bike without the small-back wheels I was between 5 or 6 years old and my dad taught me, I remember I fell many times and I always hit me on my knee in the same exact part. Nevertheless, learning to ride bike was really exiting because that meant that I was achieving my goal and one of the biggest challenges I ever had. This is why every time I go to the “ciclovia” with my father, my brother and my dog, and I see small children learning how to go in a straight line riding their new bike and their parents running after him or her for preventing any fall.
The other memory that makes me remember the time when I learned to ride bike, is when I know that my little cousins want to learn how to ride bicycle because they star asking how did I learned and where did I had the small bike. When that happens it is a really cute moment for me because they seem to be really nervous and scared. This is also seen when my cousin Natalia wanted to learn how to skate in ice and in the typical way or when we had recently bought a motorcycle that works with battery. These are accessories that I received for Christmas some years ago and that I learned to use during vacations because they are awesome.
To conclude, I think that writing this memoir has been one of the most important exercises I will ever do. If you, reader, get to have this opportunity, I recommend you to do it because it is one of the ways in which you really start to know yourself. What I´m trying to say, is that when you think about your experiences and relationships with your family or friends, you get conscience of what have you done all your life and then it is easier to understand why you are the way you are. Due to all of this reflections, I came to the conclusion that I really loved writing this memoir.
Now after I talked about me, I would like to say that the relation with Paul Auster´s memoir is the fact that we both pretend to remember things, that even though they seem senseless, they are essential in each one´s life. In Auster´s case, is very important to keep the essence of his father alive to prevent that it vanishes along with time because of this death. Besides, he also wants to be remembered along with his family. In my case, I just want to remember a lot of facts and situations that helped me to be who I am. But, one thing that was not in my purpose and maybe it was on Auster´s intention, was the feeling of comparison with the reader´s experience in any moment of his/her life with a feeling or a situation and that is why I can understand some parts of Auster´s memoirs, even though I have not lived the same things.
