Another brilliant piece from a GUNNAS WRITING MASTERCLASS writer.
Memory is a strange thing. I have always held that memory and language are intertwined. Otherwise, how come we really cannot recall things reliably from our earliest years? And why is it that as we age, our memory begins to fail us and also linguistic faculties appear to also let the side down? I know this happened with my grandmother when she began suffering strokes. The strokes themselves were not catastrophic episodes, but the slowly robbed a vibrant woman of who she had been.
But what about the memories of the beginning of our lives? Who really remembers their first birthday? And just how much detail is there anyway? It is an interesting topic to discuss. I might have to remember it for the next dinner party. It always fascinates me how, and with what, people will respond.
My earliest memory is of being picked up by the police. I am sure I had Scotty, our terrier with me, but I don’t remember him actually being there, and my tricycle that I was furiously riding down the road somewhere in inner suburban Melbourne. I remember the white gates of a railway crossing and the benevolent fatherly figure who placed said tricycle in the boot of the police car before taking me to safety. I was about three. The only other thing I remember is that I told the officer I was going to find my father. Or do I remember that because my mother told me that was what I said to them.
Apparently I had done something very naughty, copped the wooden spoon across me bum and put out into the backyard. After that, everything else is pure conjecture.
When I was three, we lived in Malvern. It was not the Malvern that everyone knows today, but working class Malvern; of Victorian brick fronted houses in neat rows, with bluestone gutters and asphalt; of metal pickets and geraniums in the front garden. The houses that were rented were usually unkempt and unloved by their owners – only that which needed to be done was done. The only other thing I recall about Malvern in 1963 is the milk was delivered in bottles by a horse and cart that would clip clop down our street at around 4 in the morning. And if it woke me it was A New Day, which meant one up, all up. My, how times have changed!
However, I digress. The Malvern backyard of 1963. It was a reasonable size. The whole allotment would have been a quarter acre. I also remember that it didn’t have anything in it beyond the ubiquitous clothes line and a dilapidated garden shed/workshop, and our sandpit that my father would have constructed for my younger brother and me. The old dunny was still in the back corner. Although it no longer required the attendance of the Night Soil Man trundling his lorry down the laneways in the early morning. The fence around the property was tall and especially tall for a three year old and a Scotty dog. We have no idea how I was able to unlatch a gate which was at least five feet tall, where the latch was at the top of it, open the gate, which had a tendency to slam shut if not supported; get the tricycle through with the dog and not make any noise whatsoever. Once clear of the side of the house, it was across the front, through the gate at the pickets and off down the street. Not only was I unheard, but also unseen by anybody.
I know what I’m like if I have a bee in my bonnet, so I can picture my tiny self, peddling furiously down our street to High Street and off on my errand to find my father. I have no idea if I chose the right direction, as at three I didn’t even know where he worked.
But what fascinates me about the whole episode is the snapshot images in my memory that on their own mean absolutely nothing. It’s a strange thing.