Childhood Memories

I have been doing a lot of reading about memory and memory loss lately- probably a combination of my career and personal interests as my clients and my family age. The topic that I have found fascinating is how things related to sensory perception (e.g. music, art, tactile objects) can trigger memories from long ago.

I experienced one such flashback this morning. I had made myself a breakfast of two sunny side up eggs and an english muffin with butter and strawberry jam.  It wouldn’t seem like anything extraordinary at first, but once I sat down and started to take a few bites something happened.

As I cut through the runny yolk and watched it spill onto the plate, I dipped my jam- covered muffin into it and swirled it around. All of a sudden I pictured myself sitting at a dark oval table with yellow country curtains on the window behind me. My grandmother had just served me two easy over eggs for breakfast and was trying to convince me to eat them. I didn’t like the gooey substance, much less the pungent taste.  Then I heard my grandmother tell me to put a dab of raspberry jam in the yolk and mix it together. It sounded like a weird enough thing to do that I tried it. Amazingly, I ate my eggs like that for most of my childhood. It was only as I got older that my tastes evolved enough to try sunny side up eggs with just some salt and pepper.

As I continued to savor my eggs this morning, every time I swirled the muffin through the yolks until it was soaked through along with the jam, I had the happiest feeling that I was in my grandmother’s kitchen once again and remembered how kind and loving she had been. Wonderful childhood memories!