By Jane Bauer—

You pile up associations the way you pile up bricks. Memory itself is a form of architecture.
-Louise Bourgeois

Who would you be without your memories? Without the ideas you have collected about yourself, about others and the world around you? I have thought a lot about this in the last couple of years as I cared for my mother who was shedding her memories the way a tree loses its leaves when winter is coming. At first there was a panic as to what would happen, what would be left and how would we cope if we got to the point where I was a stranger.

Of course there was a resistance, a desire to hold on to every moment and remembrance, but that resistance itself was a form of disease built by fear and the unknown. Eventually the path we chose was acceptance and the world around us loosened, tension slackened and we made space for new things. My mother never forgot who I was but sometimes she didn’t know that I was her daughter, I was maybe a sister or a friend or even her mother. I, in turn, had to release my resistance to the idea of her as my mother. Whoever she thought I was, I wanted her to associate me with love and safety and I let that dictate my reaction to each situation we faced.

She saw the environment around us with new eyes each day and she took me along for the ride. Without the clutter of the past we would marvel at the new green shoots of leaves on a plant or the rising of the moon. How miraculous to see the rising of the moon as though for the first time!

Our memories can be tools. They can transport us to a moment in time in the past and we can feel the texture of an object we haven’t held for years or conjure up the smell of our childhood bedroom. Our memories can also be weapons. Some people hold on to grudges like they are precious riches. Our memories can also be unreliable. Women who experience childbirth often say in the moment they will never do it again only to do it again once the pain has passed and they are holding a newborn in their arms.

And perhaps memory reaches beyond what we consciously remember. Like the complex networks beneath forests, where trees exchange resources and information through their roots and fungal partners, we too are connected to what came before us. Scientists are exploring whether some effects of our ancestors’ experiences may be carried through epigenetic mechanisms – chemical changes that affect how genes are expressed without changing the DNA sequence itself. In animals, there is compelling evidence that some of these effects can cross generations; in humans, the science is still unfolding. What we inherit may be more complicated than the stories we have been told.
None of us is an island.

This month our writers explore memory in many different forms. Thank you for reading.

See you next month,

Jane