| Last night I remembered something. It's not a memory I think about often, or a memory of a very important event, or anything particularly special in any way, and I don't know why it came to mind as I lay in bed waiting to fall asleep. It just drifted up out of the murky, echoing shadows at the very back of my mind, and presented itself for examination.
When I was perhaps about 7 or 8 (or was it 5 or 6?), we went to the beach. We lived on an island, so going to the beach is not that unusual an outing, really - most of our outings involved the beach in one way or another. If we didn't go to swim we went to fish or roll down sand dunes or collect shellfish on the rocks. On this occasion, someone was visiting us - a woman, I don't remember who. She might have been a friend, or maybe even an aunt, but I don't remember. We went to the beach and cooked sausages over the fire for lunch and afterwards, when the tide was out, my Dad and brother and the maybe-aunt walked out on the long spit of rock revealed by the receding tide. I'm not sure why I was left behind... maybe I wasn't going to go with them, but changed my mind. I took a jar with me, to catch fish in the rock pools. And along the way - about half way between the beach campfire and the people I was catching up with - I spotted a clownfish in a puddle of water in the rocks. I went to catch it in my jar - I'm not sure what happened, here, but I know it finished with me dropping the jar and cutting my hand on the broken glass. In the first flash I was disappointed that the fish escaped - then I realised I was cut and bleeding. The blood ran up my hand at first, following the crease of my palm, then spilled over and ran down my wrist. And I felt very small and alone and somehow betrayed that no-one was running to my rescue. I stood up and waved to my Dad out at the end of the rock spit - waving my bloodied hand in the hopes he would see it and come back for me. I was caught in indecision - what to do? Catch up with the others, or go back to the beach? I settled on going back to the beach, and that was the end of the drama.
Memory is so unreliable. I know that event happened, but the details are fuzzy and fading into static. Who was the woman walking on the rocks with my Dad and my little brother? In the memory last night, my mother stayed on the beach with my other smaller brother - but perhaps she didn't. Perhaps the woman in the memory was my mother, not a visitor. I don't remember why I dropped the jar - but I do remember a time when I could remember what happened. What was the reason I was hesitant to go back to the beach? Was it because my mother had stayed behind at the campfire, and I knew she would be cross with me for taking a glass jar that could break and cut me? Or was it that there was no-one back at the campfire, everyone was walking on the rocks and if I went back to the campfire I would have to patch up my injury on my own? What I do remember clearly is the thin trickle of blood running over my wrist, the feeling of panic and the sense of being let down by my family - even as I knew that they didn't know I'd been hurt, I'd hung back of my own accord and stopped for the clownfish even though I knew I was supposed to be catching up with the others. I remember very clearly the realisation that I could have been much more badly hurt, and the way that moment of clarity felt when I'd made the decision to go back to the beach for the first-aid kit.
In some ways the lack of memory is comforting - I know that other memories will fade and die the same way, so the memories that sting and hurt and embarrass now will become blurry with distance as the years seperate me from them. But even a day later I can't shake the lingering sense of confusion over the memory that came to me last night, and I keep revisiting it to try and bring the fuzzy parts into focus.
What I can tell you with complete certainty, though, was that I NEVER, EVER took a glass jar to go rockpool-dipping again. |
