Memories

One of the things I have always been fascinated by is what Anya remembers - What events she chooses to remember, what details are important to her, and how she talks about them later. Her memory is amazing! Probably not more than your average two year old, but it still astounds me.

For a while, she would just relay short details about past events. Like, "Daddy dropped the ice!" to remind us of an event that happened once a long time ago. Or, "Mommy bought that for you!" to describe the package of diapers sitting on the shelf. She remembers who bought her different gifts, who went where with her, what she ate, and how she felt.

Gradually over time, her memories have broadened and she has developed an ability to tell stories about her past. We have encouraged this process along by saying, "Tell daddy/mommy what we did today." She loves to rehash the details of her life and will often say excitedly, "Memba dat?" (Remember that?) The interesting addition to these stories lately is that she will include details about her emotions.

Two stories she has been telling lately involve her being sad and wanting to be held. On Monday, we (Steve, Lara, Anya, Evan, and Aunt Jeanie) were at Whole Foods. We all ate lunch together and then Steve left us to do some shopping while he went to Home Depot. Anya was sad and did not want him to leave. It didn't seem like a huge event at the time, but Anya has since been reminding us of how she was sad and cried because she wanted Daddy to hold her, but he had to go to Home Depot and she stayed at the "food store" with Mommy and Jeanie.

Then on Tuesday we were at playgroup and it was pouring down rain. This is something which doesn't happen a lot here, so it kind of freaked Anya out. It mostly scared her because I left her in the house (with the rest of our playgroup) while I ran out to the car to put Evan in first. It wasn't the fact that I left her that was scary, it was the fact that I came back in the house all wet. She was crying and wanted me to hold her, but she kept saying, "Mommy's sweater!" I explained to her that it was just water and all that, but she didn't like it one bit. Luckily, I had a coat along for her, so I was able to keep her mostly dry on the way to the car, but she was still upset about me getting wet. Once we got home, I explained that we would have to run through the rain again to get into the house and gave her the choice of whether she or Evan got to go in first. She chose to go first, but then watched nervously from the door as I brought in Evan and all our stuff. It took a while to change clothes and dry everything off, but she did recover. And then the thunder started scaring her. Interestingly, she didn't cry or even really get upset, but just said, "Bunder...loud...scary!" The funny thing was that she wanted to see the thunder ("bunder"). I explained that we just had to hear it, we couldn't see it.

Well, this rain storm experience made an impression on her because unprompted she told Steve all about it and then has talked about it a few times again since then. She talks about the bunder being scary and about how mommy got all wet and she was scared and wanted mommy to hold her. "Memba dat?"

Now whenever something happens, I wonder what she will remember about it and how long she will still recall the details. It's fascinating to me and makes me wonder that if we had enough time throughout our whole lives to rehash all the details of our past over and over, could we really remember back to some pretty early events? This isn't practical because after a while, there would be so many things to remember, we wouldn't have time to do anything new. But it is interesting to think about.