Memory Collective VI
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, third, fourth, and fifth installments.
Andrew Bell remembers Jean Swintek’s memory:
This memory immediately took me back to my first crush. I am still friends with her. We'll call her J. We used to exchange handwritten letters to one another. She lived out of state and we saw each mainly over the summers. I'm not sure what it was that made me interested in her. Furthermore I can't pinpoint the time that we stopped writing letters. As we grew older we spent less and less time together, she stopped coming to PA during the summers and life moved on. When I moved to NYC after college I had the chance to see more of her for one reason or another. Intelligent, successful, beautiful, driven. She is a fantastic woman. Kelsey and I attended her wedding a year or so ago, it was a beautiful day and her husband is incredible. J is about as far away from being a wuss as I am to winning to Masters.
Jean Swintek’s memory:
1936, Carteret, New Jersey, population: 11,237.
Nathan Hale School, Miss Rosenblume's Third Grade Class.
Clarence Malwitz, a wee Bonnie Boy, and I were an "item." We shared our feelings via hand-written notes that Ruthie Potts passed between us; it was springtime and love was in the air. That is, until Miss Rosenblume confiscated a missile and declared we three would remain after school to discuss the situation.
Ah, comes the reckoning when appropriate punishment would be levied; this was a serious infraction of classroom decorum. I feared my Mother's reaction since she and my teacher had been students in the same school many years ago.
Ruthie exhibited a bravado that I really admired while I controlled my anxiety with unusual silence. Not so, Clarence. He began to cry, quietly at first, then more forcefully as his face reddened. His reaction to our being discovered and facing whatever punishment was administered for passing "love notes" made my affection fly out the window.
What a wuss! I would not waste my warm feelings for a cry baby.
I do not remember how things were resolved, but I do remember how quickly Clarence fell from grace in my eyes. I have kept this memory for 84 years. Why? I cannot imagine a 7 year-old having these feelings so strongly that the memory lingers on. Indeed, when his tears began to flow I had an 'AHA moment of major proportions: I could never "love" a weakling; I would choose a manly-man.
And when the time came, I did.