Last night was such a pleasant evening, until about midnight.
Just as I got ready to turn in for the night, I heard @smallsteps whimper softly and went to check on her and she was burning up. Every time something like this happens the memories of her having seizures and getting rushed to hospital come flooding back - perhaps the most emotional time of my life, yet also among the numbest.
Last night, her temperature hit 40 degrees (104), but at least this time, she was responsive, so I got my wife up to give her some medicine for her fever while I got grabbed her portable bath from the basement and filled it with cool water - as she had started vomiting, likely a response to the temperature. She wasn't happy in the cold water, but she also didn't put up much of a fight as I calmly told her a story of when I was little with a fever.
It is my earliest memory.
I remember being taken in the middle of the night by my mother, my father in tow and I remember the panicked look of concern on her face as she carried me up the long hallway to the bathroom. I remember the brick-red and charcoal of the tiles in the bathroom and the white walls, her words as she orders my father to fill the bath and then her climbing into the tub with her nightie still on, splashing the water over me to try and cool me down. I don't remember crying, I remember being calm, but I also remember this from a birds-eye view as if I am floating above the scene in a movie.
I recounted this scene to my mother before I came to Finland and she was quiet for a time and then said, you can't possibly remember that, but I don't remember ever speaking about it with you. You were no more than one year of age. She had never told me and I have known the story my whole life, I had just never spoken about it.
Trauma leaves scars on us and even if we don't recall them clearly, I wonder how they affect our lives going forward. I clearly remember the moment my wife came to me after finding our dieter twitching in bed, I clearly remember as I held her and looked into a contorted face I didn't recognize, I clearly remember the feeling of helplessness, but the calm of taking control of the moment - it is acute in my memory, crystal clear. I wonder how long it will be before that morning doesn't come to mind when I hear a sound coming from her bedroom, her moving in her sleep.
I hope I will never forget.
The memory is an amazing thing that enables us to do so much that is uniquely human, yet as we get older it fades and twists and just like my daughter's unfamiliar face in that moment, our memories may become unrecognizable to even us, those who experienced them. Some will change over time as we relive the story making new variations that become the narrative, some will change as pieces are omitted that the memory has chosen are no longer important enough to hold, some will be lost completely as the neural paths to their location are broken down as the body decays.
We are alive as long as we are remembered by another - but what happens when we no longer remember ourselves, as the story we know is so far removed from the reality of our own experience?
Perhaps, our body carries it all with us as we become what we are today based on all that we have ever been and seen, but it is irrelevant to our conscious selves as the narrative we hold dominates our thoughts. But perhaps this is indicative of why what we do and what we believe are so often contradictory - we tell our story of what we know, but our body tells our story without it knowing, but still remembering.
There are worlds within us we may never find, times that we lived that were blown away out of reach, by time itself. To remember, may bring the pain of revisiting the past; to forget, the loss of no longer knowing what we once loved.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
Powerful piece.
I have heard it said we die twice. Once when we physically pass, and again the last time we are mentioned or remembered by the living.
Knowing we know next to nothing about even our selves makes it a bit easier to submit to be constantly learning.
Cheers!
It should, but I think that many of us (all at times perhaps) think that because we remember experiencing, we know what we experienced. Very rarely do we contemplate on whether we are actually remembering experience well.
Hi friend @tarazkp I understand that @smallsteps is your little daughter? I hope she recovered? The translator does not give me a perfect understanding of your message, but I understand your fear! Last year my daughter had a fever more 40 during measles and I remember my horrible fear of losing my baby ...
Being a parent can suck at times, but also, that is what likely makes it so valuable - even through the pain, parenting goes on - there is no quit.
Yes, our children are very dear to us, because the price we pay is very high ...
sunk costs definitely increase the value, as well as "scarcity of progeny" =)
😁
As to remembering traumatic events, its rare for us to remember anything before our capacity to form episodic memories is fully developed. But I suppose it's possible.
Tell @smallsteps that friends from the Internet are wishing she'll get well soon.
Yep it is rare, but I wonder if it is still there laying latent.
She woke up like sunshine - her parents not so much after 2 hours sleep between us.
Wow. A one year old memory? That's amazing.
I on the other hand don't remember big trauma. The red measles when I was three with the night in the hospital in ice? Not even a little. The bike wreck when I was 5? It led to three surgeries over quite a long time, and I've got none of it. I remember the bike but that's all. I got some better as I got older, but I don't remember the actual events even in my teens and 20s, but I do remember right before and right after.
Do you remember (or even know) that Steven Hawking was wrong once? It had to do with the memory of an event horizon on a black hole. It seems that energy and matter can be exchanged but memory goes on. No, I don't have enough mathematical skills to explain it at all.
Our memories (the noun) are strange and wonderful things. Our memories (the verb) are probably even more strange and wonderful.
I hope your daughter is ok. I can only imagine THAT trauma of having a sick or injured child.
This may belong to yesterday but: I'm having one of THOSE days. But I answered yesterday and I wanted to make sure to answer today.
I don't remember much of other things until 3 or 4 years of age, at least not with the same clarity.
Maybe it is a protection mechanism? For me, I remember the pain well, too well. Some of the accidents (yet to break anything) have been pretty bloody and I bear a few scars. It makes me grimace to think what I have seen come out of me :D
I think the road to right is paved with a lot of wrong.
She is fine now, with an ever so slightly elevated temperature and more angelic (less complaining) than normal.
We are very lucky, as she communicates well beyond her age and always has, so we are able to have proper discussions and explain things to her and have her process and understand. After the seizures (she was not quite two) we had to see a couple neurologists and when they would ask us questions, we would say to ask her directly, and they looked at us like we were insane - til she answered. I think she is starting to balance more with other kids now, but she is still far more linguistically inclined than most. Her Finnish is superior (90 percent of her life is in Finnish), but her English is still above the average for her age.
Well, those days become other days, and another day can be better than all those before it.
I think that our memories have some auto protective system.
It seems to protect us in the sense that the real bad memories becomes blanketed.
Trauma on the other hand gets stored up and can appear in flashes whenever one encounters similar situations.
In my lifetime I have seen some really violent deaths and although I can explain what happened, I cannot feel, or even remember the faces, or the bodies, almost like it happened in another world.
But at times a flash will appear out of nowhere that will often leave me dumbstruck. I know that it is trauma and I have learned to ignore it, but it is never a pleasant experience.
Glad to hear that your little one is okay!
I think so too, especially with intense pain. Even though we may remember well, we aren't going to manifest the same level of intensity in the feelings.
I guess this is like flashbacks for soldiers? I wonder if doctors and first responders get similar.
I was a first responder at several occasions and can share some very gruesome details, but whenever I talk about it to my wife it is as if I am talking in the third person. Doctors and first reponders build up a protective wall against the memories. I think that they see so many that they become numbed to its affects.
But again, all of the trauma gets stored somewhere laying in wait for its time to attack the mind.
I am assuming it is some kind of disassociation, taking the "human" out of the equation to some degree. Some might not like the idea, but I think it is necessary for a doctor for example to do their job without emotion, at least in the moment.
That is what it is. But can that disassociation be good for one in the long run? I post today about soft and hardened hearts and I think that removing the emotions from an unpleasant task only returns later to haunt one.
That is of course if one at that stage still has a conscience!
The old war vets have shown me the long term damages that we can cause ourselves!
Very moving! Perhaps it's having my own experiences paralleling pieces of these as my own were growing up. I'm not sure, but, kids can be scary.
I hope small steps is doing better today and it's either feast or famine with them. Do you think it'll really sick and scare the bejesus out of us or they're all rainbows and unicorns. My calmest moment seemed to be at the worst of times. Thankfully.
The only thing I remember from when I was very small are Snippets. Moments in time. A fleeting memory. Nothing really big.
Upped and reposted
!tip
I sometimes wonder how much our collective lives overlap if layered one on top of the other, and how different we actually are, or are not.
Definitely. At the time of the seizure, both my wife and I were calm, but I think that my wife was a little more frozen in place until I kicked her into gear. Once moving, she moved fast and cleanly - she is a good mother.
Perhaps this is a good thing - I wish I didn't remember my childhood as clearly as I do, although I don't remember much else from being very young.
At four though, I do remember them bringing my sister home from the hospital (I also remember eating my mother's glucose tablets at hospital) just after birth and my mum changing her nappy for the first time. I remember asking, "Why has she got two bottoms?"
Thanks for the tip! :)
Memories are carried within our bodies, I'm currently at the start of Neuropsychoimmunology therapy and discovering how much of the past is influencing the state of my body (and mind) today. It's pretty spectacular.
I realize how little memories I have of my childhood. I wonder. Some have them from a very early age - others start way later. Is that something we're born with or is it just those spectacular life-forming memories we can have from an early age?
Time to do some research.
Hope your daughter is well - how intense it must be to have her ill knowing how ill she could/can get.
I have always considered my own chronic illness heavily affected by my head more than my body and I proved it to myself through some experiments. Once I realized this, I was able to improve my condition a lot without medication, which was doing far more harm than good.
Good luck with your therapy and I am interested in the outcomes - over dinner? :)
She is fine thankfully - cuter than ever :)
Exactly! One of the General Practitioners in my city wrote a book directed at other GP's exactly about this, she titled it 'did we study medicine or healing?' (don't Google it though, it's in Dutch for now). She too is on the road of advising more and more patients to start a different road towards health than medication - and she even got a full 1000-hour course on 'food and health' approved at the medical university. I'm very excited about the adventure I started and I hope to share it with you - preferably over dinner indeed :-)
Hugs for little cute @smallsteps! <3
There is so much we don't know about ourselves and I have a feeling that in the next couple decades, we are going to start exploring this far more and likely through the study of things like psychedelics (still yet to try).
It is great that this is all becoming a little more "mainstream" although it is far from popular.
By the way, do you intend to have a little prince?@tarazkp, Is your little princess sick? I hope her to be healthy.
She is okay now, thanks for asking. Nope, no other children will likely arrive into this family.
Posh:
Nice
You Are My Sunshine@dswigle wrote lately about: Feel free to follow @dswigle if you like it :)
Sending tips with @tipU - how to guide.
🎁 Hi @tarazkp! You have received 0.1 HIVE tip from @dswigle!I forgot the incredible words I was going to reply with - yet my fingers are still typing! Clearly, this had a powerful impact. ;P
Your words are not forgotten - only my savvy response - as this piece left me speechless and flung me out into my own mental space of tattered memories pinned to a clipboard rubix cube.
Well done, and thank you for sharing this miniature memoir.
I sometimes feel like nobody forgets anything (or much of anything), it just goes somewhere we don't index/know how to/want to retrieve, but might come up (even subconsciously) if something triggers it.