The Importance of Memory Essay -- Personal Narrative Writing

The Importance of Memory I remember lying in my bed one night when I was six years old, staring at the ceiling in the darkness, covers pulled up to my chin, thinking, â€Å"Someday, I’ll wake up and I’ll be twenty years old. And someday I’ll wake up and be forty. What will I look like? What will I be doing? Will I be happy? Will I remember what it was like to be six?† Memory has always been a concern of mine – mainly, is mine deficient somehow? Everyone else seems able to remember the minutiae of their childhoods, while mine seems mostly fuzzy at best. Sometimes I’ll get little snatches of an image or a feeling, summoned by something I’ve seen or smelled or heard, or sometimes a memory will just float to the surface, unasked for. And other times, I’ll consciously try to conjure up a particular scene or moment, but my efforts are unsuccessful more often than not. I’m twenty-one. I’m probably a foot and a half taller and twice as heavy as my six-year-old self. I’m in school, reading and writing a lot, trying to figure out my life, wondering (still) what forty will be like. Sometimes I’m happy, sometimes I’m not. I aim for contentment now, mostly. This is what I remember. I’m in first grade. My teacher is Ms. Schultz. She would make the perfect grandmother: a bit chubby, short silvery-blonde hair, smiling blue eyes that crinkle in the corners, and a wardrobe consisting primarily of pink and purple sweatshirts, all cute-fluffy-animal-themed. Her face is so soft-looking I want to reach up and touch it. She likes blue eyeshadow. I’m good at first grade. The other kids like my drawings. I know not to color the sky as a one-inch blue strip at the top of my paper. I like drawing horses and unicorns and Pegas... ... and whites. I race raindrops as we coast along the highway. I guess I remember more than I thought. People tell me it’s a terrible tendency I have sometimes of focusing on the past. They say, â€Å"You should live in the now.† They insist, â€Å"You should enjoy the present.† I feel guilty at first, but I smile to see through the eyes of a six-year-old again. The guilt slides away easily because I know not to let a cloud of memories obscure the present, to freight the moment with past regrets. Instead, I use my memories to elevate my experiences now, to see everything around me with greater clarity. The past gives every moment a little more meaning. To me, it seems critical to know where and whence I came from, how I came to be like this, to think the way I do or act the way I do. Memory offers a claim of permanence, a means of positioning myself in time and in space.