Happy Sad

Someone asked me in formspring.me what my happiest childhood memory was, and what surprised me was I couldn’t immediately think of one. But sad memories, they were a-plenty. Hmmm.

I remember waking up under the bed with my older brother yelling. As a kid I was deathly afraid of loud thunder and howling winds; the night before there was a thunderstorm, and apparently during the night I went under the bed to hide. Everyone was looking for me that morning, and luckily my brother spied me as he was climbing the stairs to the second floor. I don’t remember any of this; all I remember is waking up, and the frenzy of my parents as they were alternately relieved and angry with me.

I remember waking up one Christmas morning, rushing to the tree in the living room, and seeing all the gifts, I started counting mine. Then out of curiosity, I counted my older brother’s gifts—he had two more than I had. My mom used to say we should always have the same of everything, so we had the same clothes, the same (or very similar) toys. I remember holding back the tears even though I was the only one in the living room. I snuck back in bed. I pretended I woke up late and put on a smile when I saw my gifts under the tree.

When I try and remember the happy memories, the first ones I recall are mostly post-college ones. But I do remember the earlier ones, after a bit of mulling over.

One day I’ll ask a shrink why I easily remember the bad ones but blithely ignore or conveniently forget the happy ones.