This is a musing on memories. I've discovered that the essence of memory is uniquely individual - even among or between people who essentially share the same memory. I realize that family legends are nothing except the agreed parameters set by blending mutual collective memories of an event.

When I was in Tulsa this week, my brother kept asking me, "Don't you remember when.......?" I truthfully had to keep saying "No." That's when I began to get the inkling that what I remembered from 45 years ago was not necessarily going to be what my brother remembered.

I think there are two kinds of memories - the file cabinet kind; they are there, but hard to access unless someone else prompts you to look up the file. Then there are the cherished snapshot memories all lovingly collected and replayed usually in living color, sometimes like 4 x 6 pictures, other times in full video playback with sound. These are the ones we scrapbook. However, as I discovered over and over again this week what I scrapbooked was nothing like what my brother scrapbooked. He has vivid memory movies of things that never even made it to my file cabinets. It's as if we lived in alternate universes as children.

My father is losing even his scrapbook memories. He tells me the same stories over and over again - some the most mundane such as the walking route he has developed. Others are memories that he's struggling to hold on to. I think many of his memories are simply fading to white ghosts. Other memories he's joined together to create something that didn't really happen. It's sad and frustrating for all of us.

I became very intrigued with memories. I spent time with two friends who've known me since I was 15 while I was in Oklahoma. Again, it was like alternate universes - their memories aren't mine. When we stumbled across one that we both remembered, it was curious to notice us shaping the recall into a new memory which each of us will validate as "what really happened".

Looking back at childhood, I remember mainly 4 x 6 pictures - snippets of frozen time. Perhaps one of my most interesting memories comes from the date of my 17th birthday - I looked into the mirror for about 10 minutes trying to memorize my face and trying to imagine that face 17 years into the future (at that ancient age of 34!). My 34th birthday prompted the recollection of that young girl trying to "freeze" a memory. Naturally, it didn't work. There's some voodoo selection process of what is saved. Don't ask me what it is.

Of course, when talking about memories, its the traumatic times, the stressful times, the peak times that are most readily saved. As I've aged, I'm sad to report that trauma memories are beginning to overtake the peak ones. Do we not experience those "emotional highs" like we used to when younger, or did our youth insulate us from the painful traumas that accumulate in everyone's life?

If you want to introduce a new topic to the dinner table, pop a memory out on the table (now, not a tried, true, and reshaped legend, but some arbitrary memory that involves the people you're eating with), and see what memories appear. I think you'll be surprised.

Finally, all you cat lovers - Alice (our cat) has her own "myspace"
http://www.catster.com/cats/569987 It's still a work in progress, but I think it's a hoot. Sarah (of course) found this little treasure on the web - and "Jackson" - her new cat has his own page too.

Until next time.......................................maybe from a galaxy far, far away.