My earliest memory is taking a bath in the kitchen sink. Now that I think back to that memory, I begin to wonder if it is real. Things get fuzzy with time. Things get fuzzy, the concrete details, that is, but the feelings remain. And I have this feeling, this fuzzy, snap-shot image, faded with the sun of a thousand worries, of myself in a sink taking a bath.
To me, it always felt like a large sink. The memory contains one of those deep sinks, the single basins, the kind you see in mud-rooms, laundry-rooms, and basements. But other memories and photographs prove me wrong. I was well acquainted with the kitchen sink from other memories. I had done hundreds of dishes in it. The sink we had was the generic type, two troughs, one faucet, not even a hose. And how would I know what type of sink I was bathing in? It isn’t like I had much of a memory of the incident. I barely had the words to speak, let alone to think.
And in this situation, even I call my memories into question.
Memories change. Every memory recalled is altered. You take it out. You pull it through your present mind. That distorts the shape. You put it back in. And this knowledge that I am capable of changing my own memories casts doubt on this fading experience. I have a sister who is three years younger than me. Maybe she was in the sink. Maybe I was a bystander. Who knows? All I know is that the memory is there. All I know is that tatter of experience still comes to me. I begin there, in that sink, in a fading memory that is not a memory anymore. It’s a memory of a memory. Or maybe a memory of a memory of a memory.
But I call it out despite. I tell people I remember taking baths in the kitchen sink. Though I am unable to see it. I am only able to feel its shape through a veil, and it is beyond my comprehension. I was bathed in the sink. Those baths brought me to walking and talking, to thinking and writing. But the self I was, I barely knew.
In some sense, I didn’t exist. It is a blank period.
And we all have that blank period. But we do not find ourselves concerned with sudden blackness. Because memory does not work that way. The mind doesn’t go from clarity to darkness in small steps. The mind is a pinprick of light. The moment is bright, but as soon as that moment passes, everything else is cloudy. We are half-blind in our peripheral. The edges of our eyes don’t see color. We understand a space of existence the size of a baseball.
Our memories are do not fade slowly. The moment we live in is bright, but that moment is immediately shunted aside into the twilight of the unconscious. And even when we pull these memories back into our conscious mind, they are seen through a glass darkly. Perhaps they are not as dark as early memories, but who knows what they ate for dinner three weeks ago?
That is why we are not disconcerted with the nonexistence. It is because every moment beyond the one we hold is darkness. Memory is not a picture. It is a handrail in the dark that we use to inch along.
It is an aberration that I still maintain this memory. In the many decisions of my life, that single snapshot is insignificant. Though the memory is less than a memory, I still tout this perspective and will continue to do so: I began in the sink. We all need a place to begin.
