Flashback: Mining for Memories

A funny thing has been happening lately.

She’d be doing normal, pedestrian things with Evan and out of nowhere flashbacks from her own childhood would suddenly appear in her head. It doesn’t happen all the time. But every now and then, some old image, some old snapshot from her past would appear.

Example. Just the other day, she introduced Evan to the new and exciting taste of shredded, unsalted, steamed chicken. Unsurprisingly, he gagged at the first couple of bites. Despite being toothless, she encouraged him to continue chewing on the tiny bits of tender meat. “Babies can chew with their gums,” she remembered her second sister saying during a recent Skype chat. So she pressed on. “Like this, Boo Boo,” she instructed her little guy, who was seated snugly in his highchair, with the seat belt on. She went on to demonstrate the art of chewing shredded, unsalted, steamed chicken with an animated chomp chomp movement of her mouth as if she were eating something supremely tasty. He laughed. Then he took another small bite and proceeded to chew clumsily.

As she cheered Evan on, a vivid flash frame suddenly popped into her head. It was of her as a child, at maybe two or three. She’s having her first lesson on eating fried vermicelli. It’s a favorite breakfast staple in Singapore. Of course, the vermicelli had been cut into a million little pieces. Yet, she gagged a little with every spoonful of it. “Don’t you vomit it out,” warned her Mom. “Just chew and swallow.” Obviously, she wasn’t very good with vermicelli then.

She felt it was strange that she could recall something from so long ago. Maybe it was just a random thing.

It wasn’t. It happened again one evening, as she was talking to her husband in bed with Evan, asleep, wedged between both of them. In mid-sentence, whining about how long and tiring her day had been, she suddenly recalled a moment as a child when she was in the same room as her parents, pretending to be asleep, while they were chatting. They were talking about all sorts of things that they would normally not talk about while she was with them, awake. Stuff like how her Mom was mad at her sister for something. Or how her Dad had a rough day at work.

There have been several other flashbacks.

Lately, she’s been mining for more of these long lost snapshots of her past. She’d like to think of it as piecing together lost fragments of her early childhood. They are memories she never knew she even had. Memories that are now falling into place.

It’s fascinating how Evan’s been an unexpected portal to her past.