Childhood Memory

Lately I've been reading some books on writing, trying to improve my skills. One book recommended a practice exercise of writing about a childhood memory. I remember doing this as a highschoool student and as a teacher assigning my students this very same exercise. How very different these two experiences were.

When I was the student writing about a childhood memory, it was wonderful to be able to go back in my mind to the small farm my grandparents owned. The house set pretty far off the road and was nothing spectacular but in the back was a natural play land for my cousins and me. Grandpa had a strawberry patch with the biggest and best berries I've ever tasted. (Grandma would fix them with sugar and milk, if they made it into the house). There was a small hill for rolling down, a path to hike and trees to climb. I loved that house and I especially loved my Grandpa. One of my earliest memories is a time when I was supposed to be taking a nap but instead I was watching Grandpa mow the yard with his "baby tractor". Writing about that was fun for me.

Remembering the good experience I had remembering my childhood and writing about it, I asked my older children to write a story about their earliest memory. This writing exercise for them was healing but not much fun. When I assigned this I didn't think much about the early memories of my adopted children. They didn't have much they could or wanted to remember from their days with their birth parents. What they did remember wasn't pretty. One of my kids talked about her first memory....a ride in a police car after being taken by DCF from their apartment. There were memories of a younger sibling climbing on the roof, of being scared and trying to keep the toddler from joining her sister out the window. Memories of feeding the baby peanut butter so it would have something to eat while waiting for birth mom to come home after spending the weekend at the bar. And on and on go the sad tales of these kids. A simple writing assignment brought up so many memories and so much pain. Pain that I can not even imagine. However walking through the pain with them has brought so much healing.

As a family we are learning to praise God for memories, good and bad. We are also gaining the courage to uncover more and more memories so we can work through them and be stronger in faith and character on the other side.