Memory Collective IV
The Memory Collective is the recreation of a project I found on the internet one lazy afternoon at my office. The mission of the Memory Collective is to explore the nature of memory, specifically the act and art of remembering: how we do (and don't) put back together those fragments and shards, those fleeting images and lasting impressions, that reside in our memories. At the start of our project, participants each submit a memory fragment. Each fragment was then passed on to another participant to interpret through the lens of their own memory. Our memories are published as a series in this newsletter. I encourage you to notice what these memories bring up for you: images, emotions, stories, regrets, earworms. What exists on the periphery of our memory? If you missed them, here are the first , second , and third installments.
Alexandra Jamison remember’s Matt Gibson’s memory:
I feel like memories - especially childhood ones - are like pinballs when the machine is on tilt.
They come fast and furious and then drop from sight or ring a bell and another light illuminates another memory.
These memories become all the more important and precious as time goes on because when loved ones die we can no longer create new memories with them.
The memory I read in this collective reminded me of my favorite childhood one.
We were in Spring Lake, New Jersey. My mother was still alive and well. She would die - after a brave battle - of leukemia three years later. We were staying with family and got to hang out at the Spring Lake B&T. I was 11.
Everything about that week and place was wonderful and salty, like the ocean - my first time seeing it - or creamy and sweet, like the first mint chip ice cream cones I would taste - the contrast of soft and minty with the frozen chocolate chip - with my beloved cousin, Diane.
The B&T is where I learned to play backgammon and hang out with my cousins. Where I swam in the ocean until it was time for dinner. Where my parents would be having a cocktail and beam at us when we appeared dripping wet wrapped in oversized towels and were sunburned and joyous and I can remember how happy they were. How happy I was.
I remembered all the kindness and the laughter and the love.
These were gifts. I just didn’t understand that at the time because they weren’t wrapped up and put under the Christmas tree. These gifts were magic moments.
Years later, when I came back to say goodbye to my dear Aunt Wendy who was dying of double lung cancer, these memories came flooding back again like a salty and sweet pin ball machine on a mint chocolate chip tilt.
Aunt Mary had kindly arranged for us to stay in Spring Lake and had been years since I had been there, but the memories were as fresh as a new blue salty ocean wave.
We went to Aunt Wendy’s house and she had a picture on her wall from when she was a child. It was there I saw what my great grandmother looked like for the first time. The whole family was there at the oversized Waldorf Hotel dinner table.
And then I remembered that years later my parents held their wedding reception there too.
Then thanks to Aunt Mary - my mother’s cousin, partner-in-crime and friend - I got to see my great grandmother’s home and my mother’s childhood summer home and talk about my parents and Aunt Mary and my mom’s childhood.
So in Spring Lake, I got to say hello again to my extended family and goodbye to my Aunt Wendy... and I remembered again, how much I love and miss this memorable place and my parents and how grateful I am for love and family and memories...
Matt Gibson’s memory:
This past summer, I embarked upon the task of digitizing a collection of old family tapes.
Easter, Christmas, birthdays, school assemblies, karate classes. Typical things you would expect to see in a set of Hi-8s. On one tape, a family vacation to The Algarve. (Password: Memory_Collective_Gibson)
Running around a beach, kicking sand at my brother, minigolf. From what it appears, on tape, I had a blast.
When I watch old tapes of myself, I tend to feel uneasy. I find it unnerving seeing my own self, living experiences I have no memory of. That's me sitting in the pool. I don't remember the minigolf. All I can remember from that trip is two things:
- The Dogs
Why were there so many stray dogs? Did people not want them? How does something like this come to be? How does a dog get left on the street with no owner? It wasn’t one or two. Multiple dogs, every time we took our rental car out to dinner.
- A Robbery
“We found the villa,” exclaims my brother in the tape. My mother encourages me to leave the pool because I’ve been in there so long.
I can’t remember what was stolen but we were staying in a rental home. A few beds and a pool that we loved. One morning my mother woke up and couldn’t find something (I want to say it was a passport but I feel like I would remember having to go to an embassy - also what use is a stolen passport?), she called the police. She filed a report. That was it. I’m sure she never got said stolen item back, but for the next few days, she was scared to be in the home. I don’t remember the item, but I remember feeling unsettled.
There is something in seeing your parents weak. They are the adults who guide you, tell you what to do. I distinctly remember seeing my mother as a human, perhaps for the first time. A woman with three children, in a home she didn't feel safe in. That's my lasting memory of Portugal.
It was a jarring experience to watch footage of a trip that I can distinctly only remember negative things, perhaps even more so because I look happy.
But I guess that’s why we have videos.
To remember the good times.