The Woman Who Can't Forget (8 page)

Interestingly, one of the questions being studied about childhood memory concerns this issue of when children begin to forget the happenings of their lives. Does it start right away, or do children remember a good deal for several years and then later forget all of those memories? Research that would illuminate the answer to this question is difficult to devise, because until about age two, children can't speak, and for some time after that, they may not really understand the concept of a memory and what they are being asked to do when being asked to recall past events. But there is some evidence that young children's earliest memories are generally from earlier points in their lives than those of adolescents, and that adolescents, in turn, have earlier earliest memories than adults. So earliest memories are perhaps lost over time as opposed to not having been formulated at all. I think it would be fascinating for researchers to interview very young children in order to create a fuller understanding of how rich their memories are at that time. The idea that the memories might have been there for my mind to have captured more fully is intriguing.

My memories from years two to four are definitely spotty, more like how other people's memories are described to me than my memories for the later periods of my life. One distinct difference about my early memories, though, seems to be how vivid the emotion of them remains for me. Although some research has shown that the specific emotion felt at the time a long-term memory was encoded is not stored along with that memory, it seems that in my brain, the emotion does get stored.

Another early memory of mine regarding Michael is particularly intense this way. When I was four years old, my mom took me down to the garden between the two buildings of our apartment complex and said I could play there alone because she had to be upstairs with Michael. She was firm that as soon as she came back down to the lobby door and put her hand up, I had to come running. That was the first time I was given so much freedom, and I played happily in the dirt beside the privet hedges, with a blue pail and yellow shovel that I loved. The trouble came after she came and got me. The key jammed in our front door lock, and as my mother fiddled with it, I panicked, running up and down the hallway yelling, “We have to get to Michael!” My mother finally got the door open, and I ran straight to Michael's bedroom, terrified that he might be hurt, but of course, he was perfectly fine, holding on to the side of his crib and jumping up and down smiling.

When I remember this incident, I am jolted by that utterly irrational fear that I felt about Michael, and the clarity with which I still feel my earliest memories has given me great sympathy for what children that age go through. When I see a small child crying uncontrollably or having a temper tantrum, I am sent right back to those intense days myself.

The scientists who studied me do not know exactly how the nature of my memory has affected my emotional makeup. Because my memory syndrome is so little understood and because the science of the ways in which our earliest memories influence our lives is still developing, it's impossible to know in a truly scientific way how the lingering emotions of those earliest childhood experiences have changed my psychological development. I have no doubt, though, that the way that I've retained so many of these intense childhood fears has had a profound effect on my life. In particular, I cannot remember a time when I haven't had a terrible dread of death, and I've also had a compulsion about order. I believe both stem from a particular memory, from when I was two, when I overheard a conversation between my mother and her friend Diana.

My mom recently mentioned Diana, and how her father had died a long time ago and I said, “Oh, I remember that.” She balked, saying I couldn't possibly remember that, and so I told her the story of my memory. “It happened when I was two years old. You and Diana were talking in the living room…” My mom and Diana and a third friend of theirs, Patty, were talking about Diana's father having gone into the hospital for surgery and died. What stuck most in my mind was that they kept saying he had “wrapped things up” and “got things in order,” which evoked an image in my mind of him sitting at some old desk and locking things up as he put them away. I wasn't sure why he would do that, but it seemed the only thing alleviating how upset they were that Diana's father was never coming back: he got his things in order. As I try to trace the arc of my life, it seems to me that along with that image of Diana's father putting his affairs in order, I developed an enduring fear of death and also of disorder. To my child's mind, the associations were simple: someone is dying—bad. Putting things in order—good. That simple child logic still holds sway over me.

Though I would never want to lose my wonderful memories of my earliest years in New York, I wish the intense feelings of fear and confusion, anger and dread, that my mind still conjures up so vividly from those days had dissipated as they normally do. I'd absolutely love to be able to remember the good and forget the bad.

As I've reflected on how the fact that my mind has stored so many memories starting so early has affected my life, I've come to realize that one of the most profound ways is that I have not really wanted to leave the past. For whatever reason, and somewhat ironically, from early on, I came to hate the idea of change. I never really felt excitement about new stages of my life as I know so many people do at junctures in their lives, such as when graduating from college. I never wanted to move on to new things, at least not until I met my husband.

I think I would have liked to stay in our apartment in New York with my mom and dad and brother and all our relatives and my dad's clients coming over all the time for the rest of my life, and I intensely envy people who have lived in the same home their whole lives. Before long, I was to move away from New York to the suburb of South Orange, New Jersey, and though that first move was not unduly upsetting, at some point in my years in South Orange, I developed a profound attachment to my home there. When my family later moved from there to Los Angeles, the trauma of that move may well have played a role in the way my memory began to intensify not long after.

T
he old saying “home is where the heart is” does not even begin to express the degree of attachment I have felt to my homes. In fact, I have never left home. I was in the process some years ago of moving out on my own, to live with the man I'd fallen in love with and married, but that's a story I'll save to tell later.

Early on, I became so deeply rooted to home that the thought of moving from my house absolutely terrified me. I also early on became intensely attached to what I call the artifacts of my life, from toys to records to notes from friends, and what was to become a vast storehouse of mementos. It seems that these two phenomena are interrelated: the need to keep things and the need to stay in the same place have been, I think, different facets of the intense dread I've had about change.

There is an odd irony about this. Although I remember the days and places and conversations and events of so much of my life so well, from early on I have felt an urgent desire to hold on to those days and places and events—and also to the things of my life. I can't say exactly why this is true, but I have found that holding on to the artifacts of my life gives me great comfort. Having actual things that are attached to the memories swirling in my head seems to make the strangeness of living in the past at the same time as the present less surreal.

The irony of wanting to keep a hold on the places and the artifacts of my life makes me think about the great
Twi

light Zone
episode about a man who loves to read so much that he just wants to escape from life so that he can read all day. One day he goes down into a bank vault to hide away and read while he should be working, and he is the only survivor of a nuclear Armageddon. When he comes out of the vault, the landscape around him is a wasteland, and he's alone. At first he's delighted, because he'll get to read as much as he wants, but then he trips and his glasses fall off, and while he's looking for them, he steps on them and crushes the lenses. There he is, with all the time he ever wanted for reading, and now he can't see.

My memory means I don't need photographs to remind me of how my family and friends and my houses and home towns looked when I was growing up or to call to mind my favorite vacations and holidays. I can travel back to any home I've lived in and remember it vividly—taking it with me, in effect, when moving to a new one. Though one would think that would give me all the freedom in the world from any need to keep mementos or to keep a diary of key life events, it's just the opposite.

When I was three, I began to collect all the important items of my life, almost all of which I've kept. These included a small army of dolls, from a beloved collection of Madame Alexander dolls and Barbies, to the Sunshine Family and Dawn dolls, as well as the beloved doll carriage I received as a gift when I was seven. Then there is my host of stuffed animals, including 150 Beanie Babies. I amassed a treasure trove of Cinderella records and books, as well as a horde of Flintstones memorabilia—anything Flintstones that I could get my hands on back in the 1970s. I've kept every record I was ever given or bought—my first 45 was Jim Croce's “Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.” I have all the Golden Books my parents gave me, as well as the little white rocking chair that the William Morris Agency gave to my parents the day I was born. Though it may seem an odd memento, I've also kept one of my dresser drawers from when I was five; I loved that dresser.

In 1982 I started to make tapes of songs off the radio that I labeled meticulously by season and year, and I kept that up until 2003. I still have all of those tapes. In late 1988, I started making videos of TV shows, and I have a collection of close to a thousand of them. I also started an entertainment log in August 1989 in which I wrote down the name of every record, tape, CD, video, DVD, and 45 that I own.

My obsession about keeping things even extended for a while to making some record of everyone who had visited our house. In sixth grade, I decided that I wanted anyone who came over to our house to sign an autograph book I'd been given. For the next couple of years, all those who walked into my house would be asked to sign it.

My parents have always been understanding about my need to keep things, allowing me to fill my bedroom full of my “collection.” In October 1991 I took over my brother Michael's room when he moved out, and filled it full too. To anyone but me, my room probably looked like an attic, though it was important to me that everything was kept in a strict order, and my room was never a mess. I arranged my dolls in a specific way on my bed and my bookshelves; even when I put them in the stroller and walked them around the streets of New York, I had to make sure they were in the same order every time.

Five years ago my parents finally convinced me to move most of my collection into a storage unit when they were moving out of the house I lived in for twenty-seven years in LA. We rented a large storage container, and I was packing all of my things up for weeks, which was horribly stressful and upsetting, though ultimately I think it has been good for me, and I still know exactly where everything is. As I reflect on what my parents have put up with, I am grateful that they were so accommodating of this obsession of mine.

When it came to moving, my need for rootedness and for holding on to the physical situation of my life was harder for them to accommodate. It didn't start out that way. When I was five years and three months old, in early 1971, my family moved from Manhattan to South Orange, New Jersey, and reflecting on that move now, considering how traumatic moving became for me later, it's almost miraculous to me how readily I adjusted.

My brother was sixteen months old and growing fast, and the New York apartment was getting a bit tight for all four of us. The idea of moving out of the city wasn't particularly upsetting to me, and I was excited to go with my parents when they took me and my grandmother with them to see a house in South Orange. That house was a beautiful three-story red brick colonial with big windows framed by black shutters, and several large trees in the front yard, with a flagstone walkway leading from the sidewalk to the front door. We had a big entry area and foyer, with a spiral staircase, and a lovely dining room, with a swinging door into the kitchen that was painted an incredibly bright and cheery yellow. We also had a great den, with brown shag carpeting (so '70s) and a guest room on the first floor where Michael and I watched endless hours of TV.

I fell in love with the house immediately, especially my bedroom. It was a good-sized square room, with pale yellow walls and plenty of space for all of my furniture and toys. I was especially delighted by a set of built-in shelves where I could arrange my dolls, pictures, and books in just the order I liked to keep them. The basement had a huge playroom and a bar room with a restaurant-style bar and a table and booth with red cushions on the seats. The attic, magical to me, had pull-down steps in the upstairs hallway, and I'd go up there and hang out amid the boxes of our things packed away. The smell of that attic is dear to me.

The day we went to see the house, it was snowing, and my grandmother had me so bundled up that I could hardly see through the red wool scarf she had tied around my neck and most of my face. I had another of those little childhood traumas that day. As the adults walked through the rooms, I decided to take a look around for myself, and when I walked out a back door, it locked behind me. When I tried to get back in, I thought I must have tried the wrong door, and I panicked and ran around the house twice before my dad found me.

The small school I attended was behind our house, and our backyard was enclosed by a fence with a gate that led right to the yard of the school. One of the best things about the house was that backyard. I had loved the garden at our apartment building, but this was going to be ours alone. It was rimmed with trees, and we had a swing set and lots of room to play. Moving into that house was the only time in my life that I have felt excited about a new place to live.

I did go through a bit of sadness as we were packing the New York apartment. I remember sitting with my dad on the rolled-up carpet in the New York living room watching the movers and saying to him, “Well, I guess we're really doing it.” My dad was completely happy about the move, but my mom and I both had a combination of excitement and sadness, and the first night in the new house my mom cried, which started Michael and me crying too. But we all adjusted quickly.

Our neighborhood was full of kids, and a group of seven of us played all the time: three Roberts, Judy, Jeffrey, Michael, and me. We played Running Bases, Red Rover, and games we just made up at the moment. Backyards are like individual magic kingdoms to children, and we had our own mythical Middle Earth to play in.

One of the things I remember most vividly about South Orange is the distinctive musty smell, which was particularly strong during the hot summer months. I love it when those summer days pop into my head. When I returned to New Jersey in August 1986 and again in August 1996, there was that familiar musty smell, and it brought me right back to those days playing in my driveway and running wildly around my backyard.

I had a harder time adjusting to school than I did about moving to the house. When I started at Newstead School in April 1971, I was at the end of kindergarten. I was the “new girl,” and even though my class had only eight kids in it, I was desperately shy and spent the first three weeks hiding in my cubby. My teacher, Mrs. McGriff, was a wonderful educator who understood about children's lives. She recommended to my mom that she invite my class to my house to have cookies and get to know me, and I remember vividly how proud I was to show everyone where I lived. Then, to celebrate Flag Day, my class put on a play,
The Big Birthday,
and Mrs. McGriff made me the star of the play. From then on, I loved that school.

Because I was blissfully happy in those years in South Orange, I was distraught when I learned at eight that we were going to be moving to Los Angeles. Any child feels dread about moving, of course, even if it's just to a new school, not a new town or state. We tend to think that children readily get over that sort of trauma. Some people may even think that moving during childhood is good for kids, helping them to develop social skills and learn to accept change and adapt. That may well be true for most children. For me, the experience was wrenching, and I think it had long-term impact. A fascinating question about why that has been true is whether it was due to the way my memory was already developed by that time, causing me to be so rooted to place and to hate change so much, or whether the trauma I experienced from the move perhaps exacerbated in some way the workings of my memory.

Scientists don't know why my memory changed at this time—whether it was due to some sort of physical development that was programmed into my brain's growth genetically or was perhaps caused by the emotional trauma of the move. Given that my brain scans show that my brain has some structural features that are a great deal different from the norm, perhaps my memory functioning was developing in certain ways by that time. At this point in the study of my memory, it's impossible to know. All I know for sure is that it was after our move from South Orange that the first big change in my memory happened, and my mind started to fill up more and more with memories.

When I think about our move to California, it's clear enough to me intellectually that I should have been thrilled to go, especially since I had enjoyed visits out to LA so much for the year before we actually moved. My father was offered a job at Columbia Pictures Television, at the Burbank Studios, as an executive in charge of television production, a dream opportunity for him. For a year, he lived in LA on his own, staying at the Beverly Hills Hotel, and my mother, Michael, and I visited him regularly.

I loved those trips, and I had no idea that after that first year, we were going to move to LA too. Dad usually stayed in a regular room at the hotel, but when we came to visit, he would get a bungalow for us. We would hang out at the pool and see lots of celebrities, and though I'd grown up meeting celebrities, this was more exciting because it was Hollywood and so glamorous. I also got to know lots of the children of celebrities. During one stay I hung out a lot with Neil Sedaka's daughter, and on another I chummed around in particular with Red Buttons's daughter. A man named Sven ran the pool. He was a beautiful blond guy who wore white shorts and a white shirt and made sure that we always had the same chairs around the pool.

The hotel and grounds were so safe that Michael and I were allowed to roam freely during the day. I felt like the character Eloise, the star of a series of children's books about a little girl who lived at the Plaza Hotel and got into all sorts of mischief. The hotel felt like my second home. I loved getting into bed and always having clean, cold, new sheets, and the smell and the feeling of them. I also especially loved going to breakfast downstairs and then heading to the gift shop to buy Reeds, candies like Lifesavers. The first time I was in that shop, I bought a map to the movie stars' houses, which I still have. I also loved just sitting in the lobby and watching the uniformed man who was always there. He would call out to people who had a phone call or a message, walking around with a sign and saying, “Calling Mr. Smith, calling Mr. Smith…”

My mom would take us shopping sometimes too, and I was in awe of the boutiques on Rodeo Drive. One time we had finished shopping in Beverly Hills and were eating at the restaurant Nate 'n Al's, and Milton Berle just walked right over to the table and grabbed my cheeks and squeezed them and told me how cute I was. My grandmother, who came out to LA with us often, was such a fan of his that she told me I couldn't wash my face for a week because Milton Berle had pinched my cheeks.