There are places I remember (The Beatles)

Wie geht's?

Jacky and I travelled to and from New Plymouth on the weekend to be with family.

Visiting Pat - the Bulman/Dooley family matriarch, was the central part of the mission and I was again amazed at the detailed long-term memory that old folks possess. Her memory of events that happened almost 80 years ago is prodigious.

Incredibly, Pat was talking about events that happened when she was four and six years old. 

As she told them to us*, both stories were interesting in themselves and were telling as to how they shaped her personality.

These two stories cast her older sister Margaret as both hero and rebel co-conspirator (eldest sister, Bonnie, was ten years older than Pat and didn't feature in these stories).

As a six-year-old, she and Margaret stole eggs and salt and went for an extra-curricular picnic on what sounded like an island. There was inevitable trouble waiting for them when they returned but the idle moment of idyll was clearly in her mind as we visited. 

The mattress story is the one that has stayed with me more.

When Pat was four years old, her parents' break-up led to her being sent to join her sisters at a boarding school in Invercargill.

For Pat, the nuns at the school are still authoritarian figures, wielding great power, and, although Pat says she was treated well, she quickly got a lesson in how unreasonable they could be in their requests. 

Pat is told to turn her dormitory mattress regularly, but she's four and the mattress is exceedingly heavy and cumbersome. She can't do it. So, Margaret comes to her rescue and is caught by the nuns helping Pat turn the mattress.

Instead of praise, Margaret gets the strap on her hands. The injustice of that moment (and others) burns in Pat, and I can only presume, in Margaret as well. 

I'm no shrink, but I can see how Pat's feelings and suspicions about parental, religious, medical authority; justice; the presence and absence of heroes (Margaret and Bonnie both died some years ago) can each be traced to events like this. 

Her current feelings around ageism, doctors in authority, inconsistent information, being told what to do and how to do it, the government, banks, and so on, seem like an extension of the four-year-old Pat.

It was a privilege to hear her detail those accounts, and I'm sure they sprang to mind because of her current interactions, frustrations, and situation.

I take my hat off to her.

I struggle to remember anything before I was 10 years old with any precise detail, Instead, I have vague memories tied to reading books, first day at Royal Oak Primary School, playing sport, watching films, Christmas and birthday celebrations and family holidays but not much where I can delve into events with great detail. 

The one exception, so far, would be watching The Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show in our lounge at 18 Korma Ave. I remember everything about the experience - how I was sitting, what the television looked like and so on.

Maybe other clear memories like that will miraculously come to mind in my eighties.

Love and peace - Wozza

* BTW - the 'us' was Jacky, her sister - Michelle, her husband - Gavin, and me. In a brilliant piece of mental shorthand, Pat introduced us to the nurse in the following way:

Michelle - law; Jacky - medical; Gavin - engineer; me - brains. Smiley face.