Remember The Time…?

“Can we get a puppy before I turn nine?” my daughter asks for the umpteenth time this week. “We’ll see,” is my non-committal response. Seconds later I overhear her tell the neighbors’ kids’, “We’re getting a puppy. As soon as soon as the coronavirus is over.” 

Thinking about puppies, looking at puppies dressed up in cute outfits and shopping for a doggie house and doggie bed for our future pooch is one of my daughter’s current obsessions. That and building fairy houses. Thinking about a bright near future she will share with a pet and village of fairies is her way of coping with everything that’s wrong with the world right now. 

I can’t imagine what it must be like to be an 8-year old girl living through a global pandemic that could kill many of the people she loves, all the while hearing about rampant racism, riots and falling asleep to the sound of helicopters hovering above our neighborhood. She’s convinced it will all be over soon. I don’t want to dash that hope, but I also don’t reinforce the fantasy. In reality, I have no idea. Six months, a year…two years?! Then I wonder, ‘how much of this will she remember?’

When I was 8 years old, the Vietnam War ended, the movie Jaws was released and, that same year, an 18-year old student killed one and wounded five students at a high school in my hometown before shooting himself. I don’t really remember the end of the war, or the high school shooting – although I’m sure those events dominated the news.  I’m guessing my parents decided to shield me from those things or that my 8-year old brain simply tuned them out.  I do remember the movie Jaws coming out – my mother wouldn’t let me see it – and having a very big crush on the 16-year-old boy who lived down the street. Probably because those were more emotional memories. I remember the movie Jaws from my cousin’s hilarious play-by-play retelling of the story and the boy, well, because he looked like Shaun Cassidy and who doesn’t remember their first crush? 

So, I’m hopeful Coco will mostly remember the good things about 2020 – chasing lizards, hanging with her skate club friends, swimming every day and spending LOTS of quality time with me and her dad. And while I hope the anxiety and fear caused by the global pandemic, of being away from school and cut off from family will fade with time, I do want her to remember that as scary and uncertain as 2020 was, it was a wake-up call. That it was the year we realized that “You don’t have to accept the world as it is,” as former president Barack Obama told the 2020 graduates at their commencement speech. “You can make it into the world as it should and could be.”

According to a study by the American Psychological Association, people who have fond memories of childhood, specifically their relationships with their parents, tend to have better health, less depression and fewer chronic illnesses as older adults. That’s nothing new, per say. We know that the way we raise our children will have a huge impact on them as adults. And that no matter what we do, or how hard we try, there will be things we say and do that our children will resent long into adulthood.

So, before you start beating yourself up about all the things you could have, should have, would have done, know this: Just as our memory isn’t nearly as consistent or trustworthy as we’d like it to be, neither is our children’s. And so the narrative of their childhood can be rewritten or at the very least, good memories reinforced and maybe even somewhat embellished.  

It’s easy to focus on and have a laugh about all the things that went wrong on any given day.  Many of the family ‘stories’ from my childhood are about the times things went sideways or that I totally screwed up. But, rather than focus on everything that was frustrating as hell, it’s just as easy and so much more gratifying to reinforce everything that did go well. Every one of us has likely used artistic license to tell friends anecdotes or stories of past experiences. We can use the same approach to spin a good yarn about the highlights of their childhood.

So the birthday where a local marathon meant all the roads leading to the venue were jammed up, the face-painter was stuck in traffic for hours and the person supposed to help set up never showed doesn’t have to live on in our memories as a day from hell, but rather the remains ensconced in our memories as the birthday where we scored one of the best face-painters in the city, everyone loved the corn-dogs, and we rode the city’s most beautiful carousel for hours.  Both accounts are true. But the second version is so much better. 

So for every event and every day I endeavour to make a point of reinforcing how much she is loved and reminding my daughter of all the wonderful things we’ve done and continue to do together. You’re likely already reinforcing your and your family’s happy memories without really trying. Some of the top strategies for reinforcing positive memories are:

• putting memories on display – family photos on the mantel, funny photo strips on the refrigerator and favorite pic your loved ones on the homescreen of your phone
• going to your happy place – sure you can’t always jet off to Paris, or disappear on a remote island paradise at the drop of a hat, but you can display photos of your last beach vacation and put up framed art depicting your favorite city, beaches and getaways. And,
• pull out your photo albums and leave one or two on the coffee table. Looking at old photos and appreciating things in your past generates positive thoughts and emotions and it’s the perfect opportunity to recount family stories and anecdotes.   You may be thinking, ‘people don’t print photos anymore’, or that it’s never going to happen. But beforeyou throw your hands up in the air and say, “Forget it! I’ve tried. Making a photo album is too time consuming,” hear me out. 

Like most parents, I snap hundreds of iPhone photos of my daughter every month. And, like most of you, I don’t have time to sit and edit and layout those hundreds of photos into a beautiful keepsake we will treasure forever. I’m still not done filling out Coco’s baby book. She’s eight.

So to make sense of all those fun memories and to be able to find my “best of” quickly, I make it a point to favorite all the really good pics I’ve taken within a day or two of taking them. It only takes about 5 minutes. I do it when I’m standing at a check-out line, waiting for my daughter to change her outfit for the umpteenth time or whenever I have about 5 minutes to myself which is not enough time to really get anything else done. I downloaded an app called Chatbooks, linked it to my favorites folder and the app does the rest.  Every 60 photos, I get an e-mail telling me my next Chatbook is ready. I follow the link to a virtual copy of the book, look it over, make some minor changes, or leave it exactly as is, then approve the book.  It’s printed and e-mailed to me. The book is 6×6 inches and perfect for little hands. 

Sure, my child will always remember 2020 as the year of the global pandemic, when there were helicopters hovering above her home for days and that she could only see her friends on zoom for what felt like f-o-r-e-v-e-r, but I’m also making sure she remembers these days of confinement and turmoil as a time when we spent loads of time together playing board games, sharing a laugh, stories and songs with our neighbors and putting our heads together to make a better world. The narrative is ours to create.

How do you foster happy memories? For yourself? Or for your children?