Speak, Memory

I'm reading Vladimir Nabokov's memoir Speak, Memory (1951, 1966), another one from my book club, and it's made me aware of the power of childhood memories. Of course, Nabokov's recollections are extraordinary for their detail and arcane interests. Childhood is often a time of privilege, but few will have experienced the level of exquisite freedoms and entertainments at the hands of a series of governesses and private tutors that the Nabokovs lavished on their children. It is no wonder that Nabokov cherishes those times and his memories of them, all the more so since the threat of loss is poised always in the background, emerging from time to time in sudden flash forwards to tell us of possessions either lost or saved, and of the fates of family and retainers once the revolution wipes out the way of life Nabokov is recalling with such fondness.

I suspect I'll have more to say when I've finished the book, but Nabokov has already made me seek to recover some of my own childhood memories. Although not an offspring of aristocracy but a child of the American 1950s, nevertheless, I sometimes feel a sense of privilege to have lived through an age of abundance and parental indulgence even among more ordinary children. Or does everyone looks back with fondness on their first memories, especially of Christmases and summer holidays?

Nabokov's memory appears preternaturally exact, and seems to reach back much farther than my own. I have strained to recall my earliest memories, and the best I can do is a fairly clear recollection of the arrival of my paternal grandmother when she came from Dunkirk, New York, to stay with us when my second younger brother was born. That would have been in October, 1950, when I was still four years old, but within three months of being five. My memories are distinct in some details of that visit, but not very extensive. I recall everyone gathering in the living room after her arrival and before my mother went to the hospital for my brother's birth.

That is my earliest memory of that grandmother. The other was well known to me, since I had spent time living with her and my grandfather before my mother's second marriage. But I would have been less than two years old, and any distinct memories I have of those grandparents are undoubtedly of a later date. I also have memories of time spent with my aunt, my mother's sister, who was much younger than my mother and only thirteen years old when I was born. I have a clear memory of my aunt taking me to see a movie at a theatre more than a mile from my grandparent's home. I recall that we walked, so I must have been five or six at the time.

I do have a very clear earlier memory of playing in our new living room with my great aunt, my maternal grandmother's older sister, who rarely visited us. I was playing on the well waxed hardwood floor with a set a blocks while she sat in a chair and watched and laughed. I remember she had a wonderful laugh and seemed to find humor in everything I did. I suspect this would have been earlier than my memory of my brother's birth, perhaps much earlier, but I'm not sure how much is actual memory and how much the result of hearing versions of this story retold by various members of the family, who found my aunt's behavior around children interesting because she herself was childless.

Another of my earliest memories is likely sometime between those of my grandmother and great aunt, and is one I have frequently recalled. My mother is working in the kitchen. I'm not sure whether she is preparing a meal or cleaning up. The radio is playing, and there is a program I recall listening to many times, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon -- he always gets his man. Once again I am playing on the freshly waxed floor, only this time I'm quite certain my toys are little cars and trucks rather than blocks. I can recall the dark red linoleum, but I suspect that is probably a transferred memory, because the red floor came much later when my mother decided to paint the kitchen a very dark, bright red. When I was a small child the kitchen floor was spotted black and white and perhaps flecked with other colors as well. At that time the ice box (and it was an ice box, not a refrigerator) was in the corner by the back door, so the ice man could have easy access when he brought in those large blocks of ice.

And perhaps that is one of my very earliest memories. We moved to that house, the one I grew up in, sometime in 1948, and I'm sure we had an actual electric refrigerator by 1950. So my recollection of the ice man and his deliveries to our ice box are certainly among my earliest memories. I can recall that he wore a leather flap over his shoulder on which he balanced a very large block of ice which he carried with large tongs from a flatbed truck loaded with similar blocks of ice stacked under a heavy canvas cover. Even as a child it struck me as a rather inefficient system. The ice appeared to be melting so rapidly I wondered how long it could last. He expertly swung the ice from his shoulder to the metal tray under the ice box. Yes, indeed, that was a long time ago.