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dolorosa_12Day 8. Write about the first moment that comes to your head when you read the words “childhood memory”.
My earliest childhood memory is kind of nondescript. I was standing in the little front garden of our house in Sydney, where we lived when I was two, waiting for my mum to come out of the house (and presumably take me into the car). The sun was shining. The door slammed. That is the entire memory. I was two years old.
From the age of three onwards, I can remember things much more vividly, and in great detail. Off the top of my head, my favourite childhood memories are:
The feeling of everything suddenly clicking when I learnt to read. I've said before that it was like a thunderclap in my head. It was an amazing feeling.
Various family holidays down the South Coast at Broulee. We went every summer for the week before Christmas, which always included my birthday. Looking back, what I loved about it was the regularity and predictability of it. I, a child raised without religion, never craved religious belief, but was hungry for routines and rituals, and I replaced those of religious ceremonies with yearly, more secular pilgrimages: mornings spent swimming for hours in the smaller bay, exploring the rockpools, and watching the tide slowly go out; going home and being fed piles of toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches and fresh mangoes; being read folk stories by my mother in the heat of the early afternoon; the annual walk around the almost-island, where, inevitably, my sister would complain and have to be carried; the birthday celebrations which always involved a handful of 5-cent red frogs and chocolate frogs from the convenience store; making up plays with the other kids (our production of The Little Mermaid, with nine-year-old (male) D as Ursula, dressed in a sarong with a nightdress over his head, was seriously awesome); the walk out to the anchor on the last night of the trip, armed with a one-off ice-cream each (our families rarely allowed us to eat any kind of junk food or sweets, so an ice-cream was a huge deal).
For the same reason, family Christmases, which were always an entirely secular affair, but yet always had predictable rhythms of rituals. Last year was our first Christmas not spent at our grandparents' old house, and I felt its absence keenly.
The day I finally learnt how to do a backflip. Pretty much every training session at gym, actually. I intensely miss the feeling of being completely in tune with my body, of being aware of its abilities and limitations, of my own physics. I've never found a sport I've enjoyed as much.
Then again I can intensely remember the day I realised the people I called my 'friends' in primary school were not, in fact, my friends at all. Not all childhood memories are positive. Those I'm collecting here are the most vivid, those with the most intensity of emotion.
Similarly, the first day of Year Four, when my 'friend' told me, when I produced the doll that I'd brought to school every day for the past two years for our games, that 'we are nine now, and nine is too old to be playing with dolls', and I couldn't understand why we had suddenly grown up when I felt no different to how I'd been at eight years old. I still played with dolls until I was 13 or 14 though.
I remember the day my sister was born. The night before, my mother and I had spent the evening making cupcakes, fairy bread, chocolate crackles and all the other staples of an Australian birthday party, in preparation for the family party we'd be having (in my family, we celebrated the November and December births en masse in mid-November). The next day, Mum went into labour and we ended up eating all the food in the hospital. When we did have the party, several weeks later, my sister slept through the entire thing. This reflects her personality greatly.
I remember what it felt like to read so many books that it's impossible to name them here. It was as if someone had looked into my brain and taken my words and articulated them in ways I was not yet able to do myself. For years (even now, to a certain extent), I felt that if I just offered up particular stories, people would see me, get me, understand everthing that I was about. I remember what it felt like to finally meet people who felt the same way, but that was not a memory of childhood.
I remember feeling loved, and I remember feeling unwanted, and I remember feeling secure and I remember feeling betrayed, and I remember that I felt things with an urgent intensity, as if every day, every emotion was essential to my life and identity, and while I still think I feel things more intensely than some adults, it is still less than when I was a child or teenager. And sometimes I miss that, but mostly I think it must've been exhausting.
Day 9. Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
Day 10. Did you have a good day or a bad day? Where do you think that defining line was?
Day 11. Do you feel protective over someone?
Day 12. If you could trade places with anyone for one week, who would it be and why?
Day 13. Where do you see your best friend in 10 years?
Day 14. When you are stressed, what can you use as an outlet? Why do you think it helps you?
Day 15. What do you believe in? And not just God or atheism.
Day 16. What are you passionate about?
Day 17. Who was the last person you kissed? (If you are still with them now, pick the person before them.) What would they say if they saw you now?
Day 18. Talk about your extended family. Why do you think they are the way they are?
Day 19. If you could be anywhere in the world, but you had to be there for a certain cause, where would you be and why?
Day 20. Again, pick a song that projects the mood of your week or day.
Day 21. Look back. Why did you choose this challenge? Do you think it says anything about you?
Day 22. How do you think people see you? Be a little negative and a little positive.
Day 23. Explain your life plan for the next month, then the next year, then three years, then five years.
Day 24. Are you more social or independent? Why do you think that is?
Day 25. What do you think it means to be a good parent?
Day 26. Talk about a moment where you were truly happy. What was happening? Who were you with?
Day 27. Is there a friend you are worried about? Why do they have you concerned? Do you think they’ll be okay?
Day 28. Would you rather someone tell you the truth up front but gently, or be lied to to spare your feelings?
Day 29. If you could be doing the same things you do now, only in your own way, how would a normal day in your life go?
Day 30. Look back on this last month and talk about it.
My earliest childhood memory is kind of nondescript. I was standing in the little front garden of our house in Sydney, where we lived when I was two, waiting for my mum to come out of the house (and presumably take me into the car). The sun was shining. The door slammed. That is the entire memory. I was two years old.
From the age of three onwards, I can remember things much more vividly, and in great detail. Off the top of my head, my favourite childhood memories are:
The feeling of everything suddenly clicking when I learnt to read. I've said before that it was like a thunderclap in my head. It was an amazing feeling.
Various family holidays down the South Coast at Broulee. We went every summer for the week before Christmas, which always included my birthday. Looking back, what I loved about it was the regularity and predictability of it. I, a child raised without religion, never craved religious belief, but was hungry for routines and rituals, and I replaced those of religious ceremonies with yearly, more secular pilgrimages: mornings spent swimming for hours in the smaller bay, exploring the rockpools, and watching the tide slowly go out; going home and being fed piles of toasted cheese and tomato sandwiches and fresh mangoes; being read folk stories by my mother in the heat of the early afternoon; the annual walk around the almost-island, where, inevitably, my sister would complain and have to be carried; the birthday celebrations which always involved a handful of 5-cent red frogs and chocolate frogs from the convenience store; making up plays with the other kids (our production of The Little Mermaid, with nine-year-old (male) D as Ursula, dressed in a sarong with a nightdress over his head, was seriously awesome); the walk out to the anchor on the last night of the trip, armed with a one-off ice-cream each (our families rarely allowed us to eat any kind of junk food or sweets, so an ice-cream was a huge deal).
For the same reason, family Christmases, which were always an entirely secular affair, but yet always had predictable rhythms of rituals. Last year was our first Christmas not spent at our grandparents' old house, and I felt its absence keenly.
The day I finally learnt how to do a backflip. Pretty much every training session at gym, actually. I intensely miss the feeling of being completely in tune with my body, of being aware of its abilities and limitations, of my own physics. I've never found a sport I've enjoyed as much.
Then again I can intensely remember the day I realised the people I called my 'friends' in primary school were not, in fact, my friends at all. Not all childhood memories are positive. Those I'm collecting here are the most vivid, those with the most intensity of emotion.
Similarly, the first day of Year Four, when my 'friend' told me, when I produced the doll that I'd brought to school every day for the past two years for our games, that 'we are nine now, and nine is too old to be playing with dolls', and I couldn't understand why we had suddenly grown up when I felt no different to how I'd been at eight years old. I still played with dolls until I was 13 or 14 though.
I remember the day my sister was born. The night before, my mother and I had spent the evening making cupcakes, fairy bread, chocolate crackles and all the other staples of an Australian birthday party, in preparation for the family party we'd be having (in my family, we celebrated the November and December births en masse in mid-November). The next day, Mum went into labour and we ended up eating all the food in the hospital. When we did have the party, several weeks later, my sister slept through the entire thing. This reflects her personality greatly.
I remember what it felt like to read so many books that it's impossible to name them here. It was as if someone had looked into my brain and taken my words and articulated them in ways I was not yet able to do myself. For years (even now, to a certain extent), I felt that if I just offered up particular stories, people would see me, get me, understand everthing that I was about. I remember what it felt like to finally meet people who felt the same way, but that was not a memory of childhood.
I remember feeling loved, and I remember feeling unwanted, and I remember feeling secure and I remember feeling betrayed, and I remember that I felt things with an urgent intensity, as if every day, every emotion was essential to my life and identity, and while I still think I feel things more intensely than some adults, it is still less than when I was a child or teenager. And sometimes I miss that, but mostly I think it must've been exhausting.
Day 9. Where do you see yourself in 10 years?
Day 10. Did you have a good day or a bad day? Where do you think that defining line was?
Day 11. Do you feel protective over someone?
Day 12. If you could trade places with anyone for one week, who would it be and why?
Day 13. Where do you see your best friend in 10 years?
Day 14. When you are stressed, what can you use as an outlet? Why do you think it helps you?
Day 15. What do you believe in? And not just God or atheism.
Day 16. What are you passionate about?
Day 17. Who was the last person you kissed? (If you are still with them now, pick the person before them.) What would they say if they saw you now?
Day 18. Talk about your extended family. Why do you think they are the way they are?
Day 19. If you could be anywhere in the world, but you had to be there for a certain cause, where would you be and why?
Day 20. Again, pick a song that projects the mood of your week or day.
Day 21. Look back. Why did you choose this challenge? Do you think it says anything about you?
Day 22. How do you think people see you? Be a little negative and a little positive.
Day 23. Explain your life plan for the next month, then the next year, then three years, then five years.
Day 24. Are you more social or independent? Why do you think that is?
Day 25. What do you think it means to be a good parent?
Day 26. Talk about a moment where you were truly happy. What was happening? Who were you with?
Day 27. Is there a friend you are worried about? Why do they have you concerned? Do you think they’ll be okay?
Day 28. Would you rather someone tell you the truth up front but gently, or be lied to to spare your feelings?
Day 29. If you could be doing the same things you do now, only in your own way, how would a normal day in your life go?
Day 30. Look back on this last month and talk about it.
