Stealworthy. Although I do not have any blue envelopes so I will have to do a different monochromatic design. I also love the photo - perfect for fall. Below the photo is what she wrote on the inside. It looked like she drew it by hand which would have been a fair amount of work. That is not a style I would try in a million years. It reminds me of the font Avant Garde - which came out in the late 70s I believe. Or maybe my memory is playing tricks on me.
When I was doing research into brain rehab, I came across a helpful description of why our memories are so chaotic. We think we remember things. We tend to assume our memories are in a chronological notebook or perhaps a large filing cabinet of chronological notebooks. But our brains have different methods of filing memories. If I call up a memory of my 12th birthday party where I recall what we ate, what I wore, what was fun, what went wrong, etc - the memory center in my brain might store all the parts of my 12th birthday party in many different places. The smells of the food might be in one place, the flavors in another place, the people somewhere else, the sounds, the presents, all in different *folders.* So, when my brain pulls all those components out of the filing cabinet, it might not get the 12th birthday memory every time. So, my memory (as well as yours) is (are) probably a little scrambled.
I love families who have stories where different family members have wildly different memories. There is a classic blurred memory in Mr Wilson's family. They were all in a car, grandma was driving, and one of the back doors flew open and one of the kids was hanging onto the door for dear life. Both Mr Wilson and his sister are convinced that they were the kid hanging onto the door. I think there was a cousin in the car, too. And the story would be really good, if the mom riding shotgun in the front seat thought it was the cousin.
Feel free to share your own family stories where people have wildly different memories of what actually happened. I have made it a point to be less assured that any of my memories are accurate.
Years ago, for Christmas (beginning in June), I badgered my family for months to send me stories on a handful of themes--summer memory, sibling memory, etc. One was a favorite snowy day memory.
ReplyDeleteAll four of us sibs and my mom wrote about the same day--the day my Dad got hurt on a sled doing a "first run" for us down the butte. The Butte was a lava-rock hill in the desert of Southern Idaho, and we'd been there for tubing dozens of times. This day, Dad's run was rough--on that we all agree. But the details! Dad jumped up laughing to reassure us/lay in the snow/was bleeding/was unconscious. He climbed the hill stiffly/was somehow dragged up the hill by Mom and one of my sisters. He rested for a few minutes in car and then came back to sled some more, or maybe we all went home right then, and either he was or wasn't driven to the hospital later that day.
It was wild, how different our memories were. Mine: He lay in the snow until Mom got worried, then slowly made his way back up and rested for a while. We played a bit longer but went home early. He'd landed on some lava rock under the snow and was scraped and bruised, but okay.
Like you--I don't consider my memories to be reliable. But until I did that project I had no idea how differently people could remember the same incident and be so convinced they were the only ones who remembered it correctly! I used to put this line in the first pages of my journals, too: "I see myself through my own point of view. It is not accurate."
This is a perfect story -- thanks for taking time to post it.
DeleteThere’s a good lesson here. Happy Halloween.
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