Memories and dreams of Humankind
I was three and a half years old in July 1969. I remember my dad taking me outside at night time, holding me, and pointing to the moon. He was so excited and talking about how “There’s a man up there!” My three-year-old concrete brain didn’t get it, of course, but I think it made an impression on me because of how excited my dad was. I knew it was something big!
Nichol
Other posts by nichol
The most important day of my life was December 5, 1995, when I met my father for the first time. I was informed about his arrival and I was supposed to go and meet him at the local law court. I could not sleep the whole night and I was so nervous that I almost decided not to go, but, after a long conversation, my best friend Sivlija managed to convince me to change my mind. She went with me to the courthouse where we sat near the front door in order to see everybody entering. Suddenly Silvija showed me a grey man who was talking to the lawyer in the nearby corridor and she said: “For sure he is your father”. I did not believe her and I continued looking for a person from my dreams and from my grandmother’s stories: “He is a tall and strong man with black hair”, I was often told.
A minute later Silvija’s mother, who is employed there too, came and gave me a sign that he was the man I had been looking for - for 16 years. Then Silvija went to school and I stayed there alone. I knew that he was sitting behind the pillar, but I could not move. I stood there rooted, looking in his direction. I wanted to run away after I realised how many nights I has spend crying because of him, how many nights I had been dreaming about him, how much sorrow there still was in my heart because of him. I was so confused. All these memories threatened to destroy me. Finally I stood up and made the first step of the seven steps I will never forget.
Continue reading ‘Meeting my father’
Other posts by Lidija
Memory ….is such a fragile thing…Longer we have come to the present moment, thinner the line of the memory became….then I am not even sure if it happened in reality, or just i was dreaming about it…or my brain has manipulated me conveniently…
my first memory….is just sounds and pictures….i can see only the old wooden framed window. and there is the noise that old window makes. I guess it was in winter. there are some traces of snow on the window. then cracks and sounds.
this is the earliest memory I could remember. I guess I was not even 2 years old since my parents moved to newly renovated house by the time I reached three years old.
But is it true that i was living in such a place???…not sure anymore….or do i really have this memory?…Or my mother talked about it and my brain took as my memory???? dont know….
5th year of me staying in London, my father finally decided to visit me there. Then one of the sightseeing days, I took him to the British Museum which was refurbished recently at that time. As soon as he entered the library which was designed in a circle with full of collective valuable books, he said in amazement.
“This is the place I dreamt when I was a boy! This is the place!.I was only 6 years old when I had this dream. But I still remember, and time to time I was thinking where it could be! This is the place. and This is the reason. ”
It cant be just the manipulated memory since the plan of the library was not even planned when he was young. And the layout of the library is not the usual one.
Since that day every morning (till him leaving London), he walked from the hotel at Baker street to the British Museum. (if you know the map of London, its not a short walk, not even pleasant!!)…I wonder what he has been thinking about with these walks…
Is there any strong connection between my father and the library? I wonder if it was just a key for him to trace back to his memory as a boy???
Mayuko
Other posts by mayuko
Many times I was about to sit and write a very personal memory: about my father; but every time something stopped me from doing that.
Death underlines life. If life is the sum of our memories and experiencies, where should be total. My first teacher taught me how to do it in primary school. Write numbers you want to add right under each other. When you put them all, draw a line and add numbers in each column. Under the line there will be one number, “total”. It’s easy to say, but not so easy to do when it comes to a life of somebody you know well. It’s amazing, actually, how scarce my memories are. He was a very kind and simple man. What I remember is just little things: my father caught just in his underwear on his way to toilet late in the night; his shaking hands when he hold my newborn son for the first time; he is sleeping on a sofa in living room, covering his face with a newspaper. Little, random and unsignificant memories. I remember him reading me his poems impromptu, or running around our house in a search for a pen. He would write his poems on anything: old receipts, shits of paper, newspaper clippings… he would leave them anywhere: you could find them in the kitchen, in the toilet, under the bed, on TV, on the floor, between book pages… He was a hardworking man, killing himself with a hell of a job (that was my first impression of it, when he took me there: hell, as he worked on a metal plant. Fumes, dirt, unbearable heat and red liquid metall running under the overpass he had to stay on long shifts). But he would always say: I’m a poet. Indeed, he was. I never was fond of his poems and everybody in my family annoyed by them, though. He, probably, didn’t have a talent, but there was no shortage of enthusiasm and commitment. He stuffed with his poems a pillow case, and then few shoeboxes, and then plastic shopping bags when he ran out of boxes. Nobody wanted to listen to him. Continue reading ‘Father’
Other posts by boris kislitsin
