They say, begin at the beginning. It’s good advice. Sometimes.
I’ve offered the same advice to others occasionally. Even to myself. Begin at the beginning when you’re staring at the white space of the blank page (it’s not empty, just temporarily blank). When you’re blocked, go back and back. When you run out of words or when you’ve no words in the tank. It usually works to some degree.
The King in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland gave the same advice: “Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go till you come to the end: then stop.” Were it so simple. Glinda, the good witch, in The Wizard of Oz, tells Dorothy, “It’s always good to begin at the beginning.” True. True.
Yet here I am wondering, as others have and will, where such a thing as a beginning really exists.
The beginning of what? My life? When did I begin? Back further, perhaps. How about beginning with place. A little about where you’re from, without yourself in backdrop for a while. Doesn’t that say something about who you were to begin with and how things began? How about beginning with the lives who gave me life? Parents, their parents, and so on. How far back should that go to qualify?
Maybe just talking about the challenges of beginning is a good start.
I have a first memory. Is that a beginning?
The place, an abstract gravel parking lot. Something tells me it’s Texas, when my father was stationed at Fort Hood in 1971. It’s the town of Killeen, where we lived right outside of base. I remember holding hands with my father. I’m looking up at him. I’d be about two. He’s spent 1970 stationed in South Korea. My sister was born while he was overseas. He’s already done a year in Vietnam, before marrying my mother, straddling 1967 and 1968.
While we’re walking across the lot toward an opening that leads to a courtyard and apartments, I look down and see a candy bar wrapper. I don’t remember the brand of candy bar. I don’t remember if I noticed it because the wind was tumbling it across the lot. I don’t remember if I noticed it because it made me think how nice a piece of candy would be. I just recall seeing it on the ground in the gravel as I’m walking and holding my father’s hand. I remember being small in the world around us.
It would be easy to fill in the blanks at this point. Where we were coming from and going to, what I heard my father saying, what I was thinking, what the day was like, what we were wearing, who else was around. I could have written the rest of that story in my head over the last 51 years. But I haven’t. I haven’t let myself do this because I prefer to preserve this earliest memory in all its simple randomness. I could “remember” what that Christmas was like with the tree and our presents, what the nearby park with its swings and teeter-totter was like, who the neighbors were, what mom and dad wore around the apartment, but that would all be details from photos we have in albums from back then.
I occasionally ask my students to free write on their first memory. They panic. I see it in their eyes. Most, if not all, have never had anyone challenge them to pinpoint that earliest proof of themselves, a memory, let alone write about it nonstop for ten minutes. What could it be? Unwrapping presents on Christmas morning? Floating down a river? Holding hands with my grandmother while singing at church? Trying to escape a dog chasing them out of a neighbor’s yard?
Volumes, I want to scream! You have volumes of material down, down, down in your mind. But we have to dig and mine it out, which I’ve tried to myself. And the further back you go, the more you run across along the pathway. They often mention recovering lost memories along the way to that target of a “first” memory. We have to dig for the beginning.
One day down the road I might think back and have “lost” this earliest memory. That first “known” anchor of self. It might be so gone I have not recollection of it ever existing, not even missing it. I’ve wondered what would take over as the next, first one. How my brain would fill in that earliest blank.
The new beginning.
I’ve offered the same advice to others occasionally. Even to myself. Begin at the beginning when you’re staring at the white space of the blank page (it’s not empty, just temporarily blank). When you’re blocked, go back and back. When you run out of words or when you’ve no words in the tank. It usually works to some degree.
The King in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland gave the same advice: “Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go till you come to the end: then stop.” Were it so simple. Glinda, the good witch, in The Wizard of Oz, tells Dorothy, “It’s always good to begin at the beginning.” True. True.
Yet here I am wondering, as others have and will, where such a thing as a beginning really exists.
The beginning of what? My life? When did I begin? Back further, perhaps. How about beginning with place. A little about where you’re from, without yourself in backdrop for a while. Doesn’t that say something about who you were to begin with and how things began? How about beginning with the lives who gave me life? Parents, their parents, and so on. How far back should that go to qualify?
Maybe just talking about the challenges of beginning is a good start.
I have a first memory. Is that a beginning?
The place, an abstract gravel parking lot. Something tells me it’s Texas, when my father was stationed at Fort Hood in 1971. It’s the town of Killeen, where we lived right outside of base. I remember holding hands with my father. I’m looking up at him. I’d be about two. He’s spent 1970 stationed in South Korea. My sister was born while he was overseas. He’s already done a year in Vietnam, before marrying my mother, straddling 1967 and 1968.
While we’re walking across the lot toward an opening that leads to a courtyard and apartments, I look down and see a candy bar wrapper. I don’t remember the brand of candy bar. I don’t remember if I noticed it because the wind was tumbling it across the lot. I don’t remember if I noticed it because it made me think how nice a piece of candy would be. I just recall seeing it on the ground in the gravel as I’m walking and holding my father’s hand. I remember being small in the world around us.
It would be easy to fill in the blanks at this point. Where we were coming from and going to, what I heard my father saying, what I was thinking, what the day was like, what we were wearing, who else was around. I could have written the rest of that story in my head over the last 51 years. But I haven’t. I haven’t let myself do this because I prefer to preserve this earliest memory in all its simple randomness. I could “remember” what that Christmas was like with the tree and our presents, what the nearby park with its swings and teeter-totter was like, who the neighbors were, what mom and dad wore around the apartment, but that would all be details from photos we have in albums from back then.
I occasionally ask my students to free write on their first memory. They panic. I see it in their eyes. Most, if not all, have never had anyone challenge them to pinpoint that earliest proof of themselves, a memory, let alone write about it nonstop for ten minutes. What could it be? Unwrapping presents on Christmas morning? Floating down a river? Holding hands with my grandmother while singing at church? Trying to escape a dog chasing them out of a neighbor’s yard?
Volumes, I want to scream! You have volumes of material down, down, down in your mind. But we have to dig and mine it out, which I’ve tried to myself. And the further back you go, the more you run across along the pathway. They often mention recovering lost memories along the way to that target of a “first” memory. We have to dig for the beginning.
One day down the road I might think back and have “lost” this earliest memory. That first “known” anchor of self. It might be so gone I have not recollection of it ever existing, not even missing it. I’ve wondered what would take over as the next, first one. How my brain would fill in that earliest blank.
The new beginning.