Memory Bank

A Quiet Night In

I often wonder if those dang kids today have clearer memories than us crusty old Millennials.

After all, almost every moment of their lives is meticulously filmed, documented, recorded, and filed away on social media for posterity. Maybe their reminiscences are displayed in crisp HD display. As someone richer in years, I have to make do with far grainier images of my past, projected in a picture quality much like the analog videos that recorded my childhood.

As such, this memory is very, very faint, almost sepia-toned. I cannot pinpoint my age in this tableau, or what year it is. In fact, it’s severed from all points of reference whatsoever. John Major would have been Prime Minister, but even that I can only guess at. I think I was still so young that my own house and garden were the only places familiar to me, when the ends of my street were at a staggering remove.

But this is a very cosy memory, and I think segregation from the intimidating world at large — from time and place as much as physical geography — help to make it so.

So, I’m a tiny boy, dressed in footie pyjamas, wrapped up in my favourite blue blanket. This blanket has a label which I like to rub against my cheek because it’s the softest part of the quilt, although I sometimes suck the end of it when I’m daydreaming. It’s dark out, but not too chilly. I’m picturing a night in September or early October.

In this memory, I’m sitting on the floor in my mum and dad’s bedroom, watching the dinky TV set we own. The Muppet Show is on, and though I don’t really understand all the jokes, I enjoy watching Kermit’s mouth flapping as he talks. Mum and dad are in the room with me too. I don’t think they’re watching the puppets — in my mind’s eye they’re drinking tea and reading. Relaxing after a long day. The telly is just on down low to keep me occupied.

We’re all sharing this space because we don’t have a living room quite yet. My mum and dad’s dental practice takes up the entire bottom floor of our family house. I’m the only person I know who grew up in a home with a reception, staff room, and two surgeries in the floor plan. Nowadays, my parent’s house is pretty large. But this is only because they added to it as their business improved — gradually grafting extra bits onto the property once the practice moved to an extension, and then another location entirely.

So, at this early point in my life, the three Hendersons are squeezed into a pretty small living space. But I actually like this. At this moment in time, in this tiny self-contained world, all is well. I have no anxieties or fears, no greater ambitions beyond toys and sweeties and bottles of warm milk. No responsibilities or obligations, no failures or regrets or roads not taken. I am a disappointment to no-one. My parents love for me is ever-present and inexhaustible and I do not have to share it quite yet.

This is a snatched moment of security. I can remember the feeling of it far more than the specifics. Yet, when I close my eyes and try to conjure the specifics of it all — the colour of the carpet, the wallpaper, the make of television, the sheets on the bed — I cannot manage. I can’t even picture the actual faces of my parents as they would have been, let alone their haircuts or what they were wearing. My dad would probably be younger than I am now. All the granular details that might make this picture distinct fugue into total ambiguity, leaving me only the lingering warmth and safety of a quiet night in.