memory: virtual or real?
(The assignment was to describe every aspect of a photograph)
I don’t know what happened to the photo, but I can visualize it in minute detail in my mind. It is a black and white photo, about 5” x 7” in landscape format. It is a beach scene. There are sun bathers in lounging chairs, men and women, some under large umbrellas, off to the left and right. We are on the island of Arbe, off the Dalmatian coast in the Adriatic. The year is 1938.
In the center of the scene is a little toddler boy with curly black hair, standing at the very edge of the water with one foot in, and the other out, of a wavelet washing up on the sand. There is an expression of fierce determination on his face. His little hands are tightly gripping a rope, elbows bent, body slightly leaning forward, straining. The rope extends several feet behind him to the bow of a dinghy, about half of which fills the right side of the photo. The little fellow seems to be trying to tow the dinghy up on the beach, clearly a daunting task for someone his size. A little further back, in water perhaps a foot deep, is a group of four boys, about three or four years old, in a tight cluster, facing the camera. We see them in the space between the toddler and the dinghy. They seem to be tittering, shoulders slightly hunched, looking like they are ready for action. The photo is static, but the image in my mind is not. For me it is just the opening moment of a dynamic, powerful scenario, and it evokes a nearly painful emotional reaction. I am towing the dinghy. It is huge and very heavy. |
I am straining with all my might against the rope. The dinghy drags distressingly slowly as I pull and take tiny steps up the sand, till it hits the sand and will go no further. Then I hear squealing laughter and suddenly I am jerked backwards and spun around by the rope that I am hanging on to, and I see those boys leaning against the bow of the dinghy and giving it a powerful shove sending it back into the water. They nearly dye laughing as I struggle to keep my balance, leaning back and pulling, pulling, pulling, till the dinghy finally slows and stops. Then I turn, clutching the rope and continue to drag the dinghy back ashore with dogged determination. And the scene repeats over, and over again, in an endless loop…
Can this really be a memory? Not likely. It is a summer scene. Even if it is late summer, I am at the most 21 months old, as I am December child. I am sure I had started talking, but cannot have been too sophisticated just yet. My parents had made an enlargement of the photo, so they clearly valued and liked it, and had put it in a family album. I do remember them talking about our summers on the Dalmatian coast, often pulling the album off the bookshelf and showing me the picture. Given the above I am led to the inescapable conclusion that without these sessions of reminiscence I would have no recollection of the episode, even though it now feels like a vivid, first-hand memory to me. And if that is the case, are we ever capable of being objective? |