Mystery Memories

On my trip back home to Australia I had many chances to reminisce with old friends and family members about childhood memories. Disturbingly, I discovered on more than one occasion that my memories were inaccurate.

One happy childhood memory concerns my favourite children’s book, THE MAGIC PUDDING. I remember being very young and my Dad reading to me from this book over the course of a few nights just before I went to sleep. In my memory he is sitting on the edge of my bed doing all the voices of the characters as he reads. At the end of each chapter he snaps the book closed, saying that the rest will have to be read NEXT time, and I eagerly look forward to the next instalment. This happy memory is one of the many reasons that I love the book. The only problem is that it didn’t happen.

I found out this past Christmas that my Dad has never even read the Magic Pudding. He was quite adamant about it. I could easily absorb the idea that he may have forgotten reading the book to me, after all he had seven children, but it is harder to ignore the fact that he has no memory of reading the most famous Australian children’s book that there is.

Where did this memory come from? Did someone ELSE read the book to me and I somehow confused them with my own Dad (unlikely) Or did I make the memory up myself? If that is true how many of my other memories are fictions? Not being able to trust your memories of your own life is a very disturbing sensation…

4 thoughts on “Mystery Memories”

  1. Dear Boy. On a re-read of this mystery yarn, it occurs that I might have the germ of a solution to the mystery. It’s true that I hadn’t read The Magic Pudding up to your first posting of this piece; though I have since, perhaps prompted partly by your piece itself and partly by a visit Wen and I made to the Norman Lindsay house/museum in Springwood. But I do remember doing spirited readings to you kids from The Wind in The Willows over a series of nights. Might that be the origin of your “memory”? Love, Dad

    Reply
    • Dad, thanks for thinking about this. That may be an explanation.. But the strange thing there is that I have no memory of reading THE WIND IN THE WILLOWS, though I do remember watching a British TV production, probably this one from 1969:
      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mhK50Lg8hFM
      Memory is a very slippery thing. I sometimes wonder what the point of it is, when it is so obviously inaccurate.

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