Childhood Memories

By Rami Abdo

All the memories I have of my childhood are of me as a nine year old boy. Whenever I try to recall one, or when I’m telling a story of my distant past, I always put myself at around that age. Why is that? It’s as if I didn’t exist before I was nine. I just suddenly came to be one day, a complete nine year old boy. Even when I look at photos of myself as a baby or my first few years as a child, it’s as if I’m looking at a complete stranger.  Who is this weird human being staring back at me and why am I trying to relate to it. It’s a complete blank. This phenomenon is called ‘childhood amnesia’ and is common in all of us. The average earliest memory one can recall is usually around 3-4 years old. Even several years after that, it’s usually just bits and pieces that can be recollected as blurry images.

There are various theories out there that explain it. One plausible theory is that our lack of language skills at such an early age doesn’t allow us to put our memories in ‘writing’; i.e., the details of our memories  need to be associated with specific words and definitions that help us identify them and store them in our brains. This implies of course that our childhood memories are still intact, hidden in the recesses of our minds, we just don’t have the key to access them properly in a way we can understand. Some say that dreaming is a type of key to access this vault. Interpreting our dreams is a science in itself, but being able to tap into our earliest memories seems like a wonderful thing, putting together a puzzle of our lives one piece at a time. Another way is via hypnosis, which if done right, can help bring back repressed memories of a traumatized childhood to shed some light for people in need of psychological help.

A more biological approach talks about the structural design of a baby’s brain. The connections between the brain cells don’t start forming until after about a year, so until they do learn how to do it, a lot of memories are lost in the process. Basic survival is all the brain cares about at that point, so it doesn’t need the ability to store memories until much later. These connections are constantly re-wiring themselves as well, even in adulthood, so it’s possible the first ones have been ‘overwritten’ so many times that they are now nonexistent.

Sigmund Freud believed that from a psychoanalytical point of view, our memories of our childhood were so traumatic that we repressed them into our unconscious. Only when we become psychologically mature enough to handle them do they start returning. Most scientists nowadays have discredited this theory; however, it cannot be denied that our memories and our emotions are inescapably linked. If we experience a heightened emotional moment, we are more likely to clearly recall the circumstances around it.

I do remember the traumatic moments I had in my childhood as sort of flashbulb memories; Pictures that feel like low quality still shots from an old cinema reel. They come to me more as a feeling than anything else. I still think I was around nine years old for all of them, but more likely they are scattered around between the ages of three and nine. Of course if they are too traumatic, then a sort of defence mechanism activates and represses them into the dark depths of our minds, never to be brought out again (except in the climactic ending when you get a glimpse of your arch nemesis’s medallion which triggers a violent flashback of how he killed your parents one Tuesday evening, chaining into a series of events where you are raised by well hidden kung-fu monks that train you in the deadly martial arts even though you are a westerner).

They can be quite cathartic and revealing to bring back to the surface. I had a relatively normal childhood which I would love to relive: Trips to exotic countries with my family by my side, playing with the other neighbourhood kids in the streets of Cyprus (it was the safe eighties!), going on adventures and discovering new realms with my friends. But for some others, their past was a dark time which they just want to put behind them. They are more interested in their future, creating new memories, fixing the mistakes of their parents and changing the legacy of their nation. Who can blame them? In a way I do envy these people, because they only look forward, onto their next adventure, instead of digging into the past as I constantly do. I could certainly learn a thing or two from them.